


british to the very last

by paox



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - GTA V, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Fake AH Crew, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Past Abuse, M/M, Missing Persons, Multi, and the rest of the crew are understandably distressed with this turn of events, basically gavin disappears and jeremy has gotta find him, heavily Jeremy-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23131276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paox/pseuds/paox
Summary: Gavin takes pause. Then, he says, “You’ve got contacts to pay off back in Boston, right? And if you stop, they might come and kill you.”Jeremy almost cries right then and there. The secret he’s been keeping for years, now, so close to his chest that he was sure nobody suspected a thing. Out on the table like Gavin has known for decades.“Gavin-““I’m not gonna tell them,” Gavin says. “If it was dangerous to us, you wouldn’t do it. Lovely Jeremy.” There’s a sad smile in his voice. “Best of us.”“I-“ And Jeremy runs a hand down his face, glancing around. Then, he says, “Give me one minute. Don’t hang up.”or: Gavin goes missing without a trace, gangs burn out and leave nothing in their wake but legacy, and Jeremy thinks that if bringing Gavin back would help the others, what does anything else matter?
Relationships: Jeremy Dooley & Gavin Free, Jeremy Dooley & Gavin Free & Ryan Haywood & Michael Jones & Jack Pattillo & Geoff Ramsey, Jeremy Dooley/Gavin Free/Michael Jones
Comments: 40
Kudos: 76





	1. you don’t wanna fuck with us

**Author's Note:**

> hello hi i haven’t used this account in forever! i write mostly original stuff/webserials/novels rn and am working towards that sweet sweet Professional Published Author status but fahc called to me and i had to write some of these spicy boys. enjoy!
> 
> *there are also some Cow Chop/Hub references in this chapter, but it’s not integral to the plot to know anything about those groups! it’s just me paying tribute to some lads i think deserve it.

Michael barges out of the room three hours after they all get back from a job. Gavin hasn’t been seen for three days at this point, and nobody is worried.

“Gotta take this,” Michael says to nobody in particular, stumbling over Jeremy’s legs, and then he’s out of the door, phone to his ear. 

Geoff snorts from where he’s sat back against the countertop, sipping a diet coke. “Rude.”

“Maybe it’s Gavin,” Ryan speculates vaguely, from the couch.

“Doubt it.” Jeremy sighs. “You know how he gets. I’d give it a week until he comes back.”

“I’d give it two,” Jack says. She’s still got a little ash smeared across her cheeks, and she looks pleased, a rosy glow about her from where she’s sat at the coffee table. 

Jeremy nods, picking at some blood under his nails and zoning out, sneaking glances at intervals at the door. He barely pays attention as Jack picks a fight with Ryan about something and Geoff gets into the thick of it, too, the three of them arguing back and forth about the angle one of the helicopters came down in their last big heist. 

It wasn’t a big job, not this afternoon. A small-time smuggling fix to lend Haus a hand. Enough that the five of them were needed to escort the goods through enemy territory, but not enough that Gavin’s conspicuous absence was particularly arduous, and they all got through it just fine without his cheerful voice through the comms, his garish presence among them, between Michael and Jeremy. 

Nobody is concerned. Sometimes, Gavin simply disappears, comes back a week or a month later with nothing lost or gained from it. 

Maybe it’s because he’s the newest, but Jeremy feels like he’s the only one who ever gets worried. 

He’s been running with the other five for what is, in actuality, four years or so, but it feels like decades at this point - he knows them all, Gavin and Michael especially, so well that he thinks he could better predict their moves than his own at this point. The insecurity of the first year or so, when Jeremy was still little more than a shitfaced street fighter from Boston who was determined to believe he didn’t belong, faded eventually, and while it comes back from time to time, especially on nights when heists and jobs go south, it’s something he handles well. 

But at times like this, none of the group even flinching with one of their own gone, Jeremy can’t deny that he feels distinctly alien. 

Maybe it’s just that he and Gavin have a relationship that lies distinct from all the others - but, then again, Michael does, too, and Geoff as well, if you count that he practically raised Gavin, that he’s practically his kid. Jeremy wouldn’t go as far as to say he cares more for their resident Brit than any of the others, because he doesn’t think that’s possible, but when none of them bat an eyelid when Gavin disappears and comes back hollow behind the eyes and disquieted in a way not even Michael and Jeremy can fix, Jeremy can’t help but wonder.

_ He’ll be fine, Jeremy, _ he remembers Geoff telling him, four days into one of Gavin’s first excursions with Jeremy a part of the main group. _ He does this a lot. _

_ Where does he go? _ Jeremy had asked.

Geoff had shrugged.  _ Who knows. Somewhere. We don’t ask. Not our place.  _ Not yours, either, he hadn’t added, but his words had rung true with the message regardless.

All of this leaves Jeremy where he is now - trying to pretend, as he does every time this happens, that everything is fine, that everything is normal. That Gavin isn’t simply a living, breathing vanishing act. Times like this make him wonder how the others would react if he disappeared like Gavin does, if one night he simply didn’t come home. 

Michael would kill him. Jeremy shudders at the thought. He might do something even worse, like get sad about it, which is even more terrifying.

Ryan waves a hand in front of Jeremy’s face. “You in there, Jeremy?”

Jeremy flinches like somebody has fired a gun. “Shit. Hi, Ryan.”

Ryan, leaned over him to get his attention, smiles awkwardly. “Alright there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, uh, I’m fine. Was just thinking.” Jeremy shakes his head. “Sorry, what did you want?”

Geoff snickers. “Looked all introspective for a second there, Jeremy. It’s been, like, five years, bud. Feeling the moral repercussions now? Wanna turn us all in to the pigs?”

Jeremy plays along. “Oh, man, you’ve got no idea. Turns out I was a plant all along. Time to die, criminal scum.” He mimes flashing a badge.

Jack snorts. “I don’t think they’d let you join a neighbourhood watch, Jeremy, let alone a police force.”

“A guy can dream, right?”

Ryan makes a  _ darn it _ gesture and accidentally knocks over his empty soda can with his elbow. “Waited until Gavin was out of the picture to screw us all over. Hey, speaking of Gavin-”

As if on cue, the door opens. Michael steps in, frowning, staring down at his phone like it just asked him to solve a riddle. “Hey, we’ve got a problem.”

Jeremy’s head snaps up embarrassingly quickly. “What’s wrong, Michael?”

“I just got a call from Gavin.” Michael bypasses Jeremy’s stare to look right at Geoff, and Jeremy thinks that’s the moment when it sinks in for all of them that this time, it isn’t a normal disappearance. 

Geoff cocks his head to the side. “What’s up?”

“He said he’s not gonna be back for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

Jeremy looks between the two of them like he’s watching a tennis match. Michael is still frowning. “He didn’t say. He sounded- off.”

“How off?” Jack asks.

“I don’t know,” Michael half snaps. His temper has mellowed in the past few years, but at times like this, it shines through. “Just… just off.”

“Track the call?” Jeremy suggests.

Everybody looks immediately uncomfortable with that.

Jeremy cringes in on himself.  _ Wrong move. _ “Or, y’know, we can leave it-”

“Tell you what,” Geoff says, in that voice he uses when he’s putting forward a plan that he doesn’t expect to get very far, “If he doesn’t call again in, let’s say- a week. Then, we get worried. And maybe, we track him. Just to see. Got it?” 

There are a few murmurs of assent. Geoff looks pleasantly surprised that his proposition has gone down so well. The air has gotten tighter, though, and the tension thicker, and Ryan gets up and walks out, mumbling something about fixing one of his bikes. The only bike in need of replacements is one of Gavin’s, the long, sleek black one that Trevor likes, but nobody mentions it. 

Jack gets up, too. She tells the room at large, “I’m gonna call Haus. See if everything went okay after we left.”

“Good luck,” Jeremy tells her, when nobody says anything. She picks her way over the jackets, guns and shoes scattered across the ground and out of the room, too. 

Michael flops down next to Jeremy. “Looks like you swallowed a lemon, Lil J.”

The nickname makes Jeremy’s insides turn to rot. He swallows and laughs, like he always does when he’s uncomfortable. “Yeah? Guess I’m just worried. Like a fuckin’ idiot.”

“No need to be,” Geoff comments. He pours the rest of his coke down the drain and underarms the empty can into the trash. “Little prick just gets like this, sometimes.”

“I know,” Jeremy says. “But, like- “

Michael says to Geoff, then, “Remember the first time he did a runner after he’d joined?”

Geoff snorts. “Fuck yeah I do. Came back after three weeks like nothing had happened. Never been so worried in my life.”

“Where does he go?” Jeremy puts in, like there’s any chance he’ll get a clearer answer than all the other times he’s asked. 

Michael snorts. “Fuck if I know. Somewhere. Home, maybe. Never takes any of our planes or shit. Just vanishes, like a moron. Like he doesn’t have a price on his head and the cops on his ass. Gets flighty if you keep trying to call, so I wouldn’t suggest it. But you know that.”

Jeremy nods. He does. He’s been around long enough to know that it won’t help.

“We’ve got enough on our plate, anyway.” Geoff rubs his face tiredly. “What with Fake Chop going down. Jesus, that was a mess.”

Jeremy feels his face go morose at the same instant as Michael’s. All of their fellow gang - all that were left, anyway - arrested right out of their base. They were let out of police custody by a benefactor Geoff suspects to be Hundar, who’s gone dark now, too, and now they’re scattered to the winds. Nova is still based in LA, solo again after years and years of crew running. When it comes to Immortal, nobody knows. It’s just how it goes in this business, but it still makes Jeremy nauseous to think of them all simply drifting back into the lives they lead before their crew.

“Two of them have started their own thing, apparently,” Geoff comments. “Something-canny. Uncanny. Offcanny. Something like that. Gives me deja vu, the whole thing.”

“I heard,” Jeremy assents. “Weird guys. Got a cult following in underground Los Angeles.”

“Well,” Geoff mutters, “When we reached out they weren’t too open to a partnership, so I feel like that’s a ship that’s sailed.”

Michael shrugs. “Crews come and go. And come and go, and come and go, and come and go again, if they’re the Hub.”

“God, yeah.” Geoff looks nostalgic and sad all at the same time. “Third time lucky, I guess.”

Talking about crews crumbling like Chop did, fading like the Hub, always makes Jeremy morose and nervous. He coughs into his hand uncomfortably. “Well, good luck to all those still alive, I guess God knows Nova is gonna be fine.”

“Always is,” Geoff snorts. “Pretty sure he’s the immortal one.”

They move onto other topics after that. Michael rattles off a dozen or so of the young upstarts to keep an eye out for this week, giving his personal - and rather explicit - opinion of each. The world they run in never sleeps, never stops, and Los Santos is no exception to the rule. New kids pop up every day, running drugs, smuggling, stealing, popping each other off like it’s what they were born to do. It’s exhausting to keep track of them all. Michael told Jeremy once that he does it to keep him sane. 

Jeremy excuses himself at one point to sleep, citing exhaustion after the job. Neither Michael nor Geoff believes him, he thinks, but they don’t stop him, and Jeremy stumbles his way through the bathroom, washes his face free of ashes, steps in the shower for a few stolen minutes. All of Gavin’s cosmetics are scattered across the windowsill. He didn’t even take his concealer, an expensive brand that he always says takes care of bruises. Everything sits there just the way he left them days ago now, and Jeremy is consumed with a sudden, terrible longing, so intense that it almost brings physical pain, to have Gavin here.

He manages to push through it, stumbles through the haze that comes with missing somebody so strongly and back out into the bedroom. Their bed is only a queen, small but big enough for Gavin, Michael and Jeremy so long as you don’t take into account personal space, which none of them have for years. Jeremy crashes right in the middle, between where Gavin lies on the left and Michael on the right. It’s always one of them between the other two. They have no set order, but the three of them always seem to find themselves clustered together anyway.

Jeremy can tell he’s approaching moping territory. He can’t bring himself to care.

Fishing in his pocket, he pulls out his phone and scrolls absentmindedly through his messages, landing on Gavin’s before he can think to do anything else. His  _ hope you’re okay, Gav  _ from two days ago has gone unanswered. It’s not even been read, and Jeremy knows this for sure; Gavin is the only one of them who leaves on read receipts, the rest far less efficient when it comes to keeping in contact.

That is, until now, Jeremy supposes. Until stuff like this happens.

He rolls over, sighing. The sheets smell like Gavin, and so do the pillows. He jokes and jests about hating the guy, but Jeremy thinks he’d give about anything to have the third of their trio here right now.

Michael comes in, at one point. “Alright, J?” He sounds vaguely intoxicated. 

Jeremy mumbles noncommittally. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then, Michael sprawls out half on top of him. “No, you’re not. We’re in, like, stupid amounts of moping right now, huh?”

“No I’m not.” Jeremy coughs from under Michael, feeling a little pathetic. “‘M fine.”

“Sure, dumbass.” Michael sits up and looks him in the eye. “You know he’ll be fine, right?”

“I know.”

“And you know he wouldn’t want you to miss him.”

“That’s not true,” Jeremy refutes, “He would absolutely want that.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll give you that one.” He rolls over, onto his back, and Jeremy shuffles up to lie next to him. “Bet that asshole is in some hotel somewhere, rubbing his hands together at the thought of the two of us getting all sad and shit. Ha. Bet he does this just to make us go insane.”

Jeremy laughs, not really meaning it. Neither of them does. Joking at times like this always feels inopportune.

“When he comes back,” Jeremy tests the waters, not wanting to say  _ if he comes back _ so playing it safe instead, “Reckon he’ll be okay this time?”

Neither of them has to mention how erratic it can be. At times, Gavin returns after a week like nothing happened. Other times, more infrequently, he comes back all quiet and flinchy and weird. Those are the times nobody wants to mention.

“No matter what,” Michael sighs, “We just have to wait it out.”

“I thought all this was about trust.” Jeremy runs a hand back through his hair. “You know. If I had secrets that made me leave without warning once every few months, Geoff would, like, literally hire a hitman on me. And that hitman would probably be Ryan.”

Michael snorts. “Well, if there’s a reason Geoff hasn’t sent Ryan out after him yet, he definitely hasn’t told me. Apart from the fact that Ryan is shit at tracking.” He pauses, then looks at Jeremy. “You’ve got a history with that, right?”

“I guess.” Jeremy shifts uncomfortably. “I’ve, uh, y’know- back in Boston, I worked under a guy for a while who- well, he was good at finding people. That’s what he’d get hired for. Taught me a few things. Nothing big.”

Michael sighs. “Yeah.” He sounds oddly disappointed.

Jeremy pokes him in the ribs. “Thought nobody was allowed to go find him?”

“It’s not like nobody’s allowed.” Michael sighs. “Just- y’know what. Let’s just leave it. It’s not like he’s gonna die, right?”

“That’s, like, the worst thing you could possibly say. Ever. That’s terrible, Michael.”

Michael shoves Jeremy’s shoulder, snorting. “Asshole. We’re gonna be fine. You know that.”

Jeremy sighs, unable to hold back his smile, and shuffles over to Michael’s side. Neither of them is too touchy-feely, not in the affectionate way. There’s no need to be, not with the way the three of them have gotten so close over the years. Being in one another’s presence as often as they are, the trio have gotten good at transmitting affection without having to do so overtly. Existing in the same air, the same space, pressed together without tenderness or caressing, is as good as the constant affection they succumbed to when Jeremy first joined the fold. 

Michael jabs at him, shuffles inwards until they’re all tangled up like a gay, soot-stained slinky. They have a staring contest, lying inches from one another’s faces. Jeremy wins. 

“Fuck,” Michael murmurs.

Jeremy sticks his tongue out. 

“Gross, dude,” Michael tells him, and then does the exact same thing.

“You gotta brush your teeth,” Jeremy says. “You stink.”

Michael wiggles his eyebrows. “Stanky.”

“Real fuckin’ stanky,” Jeremy confirms, solemnly

Michael stands up and stretches. Jeremy pokes his stomach, because he knows his fingers are cold, and they play-fight for a while, more an excuse to unwind than anything. 

It’s not the same as if Gavin was here - it’s not even close. His absence leaves a distinct influx of space in the bed, a surplus of silence. But it’s still nice. Jeremy still thinks Michael is everything and more, and he knows Michael feels the same, even if he’s had Gavin longer, even if he knows Gavin better. Measures like that mean little to any of them at this point. Jeremy hasn’t questioned whether he belongs in years.

Jeremy dozes off at some point (after Michael has brushed his teeth), Michael having pulled out his phone, now scrolling through it. Jeremy passes out, drooling, on one of his arms, using it as a pillow because he knows Michael won’t shove him off. Might yell at him later, sure, but he won’t mean it.

It’s nice to be loved, Jeremy thinks. And he knows full well that he’s loved.

***

The call comes through at twenty past two in the morning. Jeremy feels his phone vibrate from somewhere near his head and he scrambles to silence it, Michael asleep in the bed next to him. Then, squinting in the darkness, he reads the caller ID.

Jeremy is stumbling out of bed before he can help himself, getting outside the bedroom and closing the door behind him. Then, he hits answer. “Gav.”

Gavin takes a moment to say anything. He laughs sort of nervously, quiet and slightly unsure of himself. “Hey, Lil’ J.”

“Hey, Gavin.” Jeremy sinks down against the wall. This is the first time Gavin’s gotten in contact with him and only him in all his years of up and disappearing with no warning. “You alright, buddy?”

“Eh.” Gavin makes a noncommittal sound. “Been better. Definitely been better.” Jeremy can hear his discomfort.

“Anything I can do?”

“I don’t know.” Gavin’s voice shutters to a stop. Then, he says, “Are the rest all okay?”

“They’re fine,” Jeremy says. “They’re okay. The job went fine. Michael is worried about you.”  _ So am I. _

He can almost see Gavin wince. “I’m okay. Not, like, dead or anything.”

“I didn’t think so, Gav.”

“And are you okay?” Gavin laughs. It sounds faint and not very real. “Lovely Jeremy.”

“Me? I’m fine. Never been better. Always fine.” Jeremy laughs uncomfortably. “You know me.”

Gavin shuffled around. Nods, maybe, and then says, “Yeah.”

There is thick, heavy silence between them for a few moments. 

Then, Gavin says, “I miss you lot. Hate doing this stuff. I never want to leave, y’know.”

“I know,” Jeremy says, instead of  _ then why do you? _ which is what he would much prefer to say. “Gav, give me the word and I’ll come get you.”

Gavin’s breath goes stilted. “Jeremy…”

“I mean it.” Jeremy can’t stop the word now that they’ve started coming out. “One word, Gav. I know you’re not gonna die or anything but-“

Gavin lets out a short, unsure laugh. “You idiots always seem to assume I’m out fighting for my life.”

“You could be,” Jeremy says, unable to stop himself. “We don’t know anything about any of it.”

There is silence on the other end for a while. Jeremy almost thinks Gavin has hung up, or gone to sleep, or died, or something comparatively lonely. 

“I’ve been doing this since the beginning,” Gavin says, abruptly, more purpose in his voice. “Just when things get too tight. When I think we might not make it. Big long bloody roadtrip out to nowhere to pull some strings. It sucks being far from home.”

Jeremy says, “Whatever strings you’re pulling, we can survive without them.”

“I know.” Gavin sighs. “See, only problem there is that I have more commitments than just you lot. Gotta pull strings for other people too, or they’ll off me, and that wouldn’t be good for anybody.”

The words come as a sting, but not as a shock. Jeremy rolls with the punch. “Commitments back home?”

“Depends what home is,” Gavin evades. 

“I-“ And Jeremy chooses his words carefully, then. “To the others, home is here. Is it to you?”

“Depends,” Gavin says. He’s never so delicate with his words. Abruptly, Jeremy wants to put his fist through a wall, because Gavin is meant to be loud and stupid and laugh like a feral animal, is mean to be dumb and reckless, and hearing him tired and unsure and so conscious of his words sucks. Jeremy hates it. 

“Depends on what?” Jeremy pretends his voice isn’t shaking.

“Is it home to you?”

Jeremy chews his lip. “Of course it is. Of course.” It’s not a lie. Not technically. “Gav, come back.”

Gavin sighs, heavy and hard. “I think us two, we get it in a way the others don’t.”

“We do?”

“We do,” Gavin says, less an answer to the question and more a question in itself. “The rest of them, they cut ties years ago. But you and I, we’ve got history.”

“Who says I’ve got history?” Jeremy’s voice lowers without his permission. He feels like Geoff is about to jump out from behind a pillar and, like, taze him, or some shit. 

“Takes one to know one.” Gavin laughs softly. “I hate us being cryptic. I hate it, Lil J. I wanna play Mario Kart. I miss all the dumb colours you dye your hair. I miss Geoff. Wanna come home.”

“Then just tell me what’s going on,” Jeremy almost pleads. 

Gavin takes pause. Then, he says, “You’ve got contacts to pay off back in Boston, right? And if you stop, they might come and kill you.”

Jeremy almost cries right then and there. The secret he’s been keeping for years, now, so close to his chest that he was sure nobody suspected a thing. Out on the table like Gavin has known for decades. 

“Gavin-“

“I’m not gonna tell them,” Gavin says. “If it was dangerous to us, you wouldn’t do it. Lovely Jeremy.” There’s a sad smile in his voice. “Best of us.”

“I-“ And Jeremy runs a hand down his face, glancing around. Then, he says, “Give me one minute. Don’t hang up.”

He shoves his phone into his pocket and pads back into his and Michael’s room. Michael is asleep, still, snoring in a way Jeremy knows he can’t fake. Jeremy grabs his jacket and his gun and throws on some pants, throws some clothes into a bag. He takes his keys and his boots and leaves Michael to sleep. He thinks he would lose his willpower if he stopped to kiss him goodbye.

Back outside the room, Jeremy starts down the hallway. He pads through the kitchen and steals one of Ryan’s organic energy bar things from the cupboard. Jeremy grabs one of their communal post-it notes and leaves a hastily scrawled message stuck to the doorknob into the kitchen. 

_ Gone to sort out some business. Don’t worry! Will be back. Love you all you assholes. J. _

Jeremy figures that’s succinct enough. He caps the pen and leaves fingerprints all over the note because he knows they’ll test it to make sure it’s from him, and then he takes the elevator down to the garage. 

When Jeremy reaches his bike - his favourite girl, black and red so as not to attract attention like the rest of his Rimmy-related insanity - he sits down across the seat and pulls his phone back out.

Gavin has hung up. Jeremy calls him back and he answers on the last ring. 

“Thought I could get out of that one,” Gavin says. “Kind of stupid.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Jeremy agrees. “I’m on my bike. Which way am I going?”

Gavin’s breathing stumbles to a stop. Then, uncomprehending, he says, “What?”

“I’m coming to get you,” Jeremy says. “Asshole. Which way am I driving, Gav?”

“You can’t just-“

“Gavin,” Jeremy implores. “I’m coming to get you.”

There is a moment of silence. Then, Gavin sighs and says, “Okay.”

“East or west out of the city?”

“North,” Gavin instructs. 

Jeremy clocks on. “Airport?”

Gavin murmurs in assent. “London, Heathrow is your best bet at a morning flight.”

“Fuck,” Jeremy says. He feels around in his pockets for his (admittedly fake) passport. “Alright. I’ll be there in, like, fourteen hours. Don’t die. I’m bringing you back home and then we can talk about our debts and our pasts and our stupid fucking- hiding shit from everybody. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Gavin agrees. “Okay.”

There is a moment of silence. Then, Gavin hangs up.

Jeremy starts up his bike. 


	2. nothing you can do about it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for the encouragement on the last chapter! enjoy!

Jeremy reaches the airport as it hits three AM, and he’s booked onto a seven o’clock flight by half-past, sitting in a cafe past security with his laptop. Without his garish attire, nobody out here recognises him, and the man who checked him through at security barely paused to look Jeremy in the eye. Small mercies, he supposes.

He logs in and gets to work, then.

No point in calling Trevor this early - he’ll just call the others, and Michael will come get him even if it means blowing this whole terminal up, and Geoff will yell at him, and it won’t be much fun for any of them. Jeremy guesses the password to his login to their private network after six tries, which is a surprisingly high number considering how well he knows the guy by now, and then he’s in Trevor’s account. Trevor, Jack and Geoff are the only ones with full access to all of their files (Trevor because he organises them, Jack because she uses them most often and Geoff because he’s Geoff), and there’s no way in hell Jeremy is going to risk getting into any of the gents’ accounts. They’d never let him live it down.

It’s a surprisingly well organised mainframe. There’s a file tagging system and Jeremy finds Gavin’s label ( _ GB _ , and he can’t tell if that stands for Golden Boy or Great Britain or Giant Bastard or something to that effect) and clicks through to filter everything.

It’s a mass of files, a huge amount of data - Jeremy spends ten minutes just scrolling absently, unsure of where to start. Then, he comes upon a folder titled ‘08-09-10’ and recognises the date among the rest of the mess - it’s the day before Gavin first fled to America, all those years ago, if Jeremy is remembering the date right. The tenth of August was when he touched down on American soil, and presumably was assumed to have never looked back. 

The file itself is full of .pngs. Jeremy clicks on the first one, titled a string of numbers and letters that he can’t decipher. It takes a moment to open in the preview tab, and then Jeremy feels his mouth tighten at the corners as he looks at it. 

It appears to be a frame shot from a security camera of an empty office, entirely rifled through. Tables are turned over and there are bullet holes in the wall. It’s a still image, but Jeremy feels a chill creep up his spine anyway, sure that somebody is going to walk onto the scene, to discover the carnage. 

Nobody steps in. Jeremy tabs over to the next image. 

It’s veritably the same image, though the fuzzy visual noise attached to the low quality image has shifted a little, like it was taken a moment later. He tabs over again, and again, nothing has moved, but it’s distinctly a slightly different frame. Tab. Tab. Tab. Tab. 

Jeremy has shot through maybe fifty of these images when he comes upon the first one that holds any value. In one frame, the bullets are in the wall, and in the next, they’re not. The camera must have been too low in frame rate to catch the firing. It occurs to Jeremy that the photos are backwards. 

He tabs out of the preview space and scrolls through the image files right down to the bottom. Then, he starts at the beginning. 

The bottom image, taken first, shows the office before the ransacking. It’s still and untouched. He tabs along by ten and there is movement in the bottom corner of the camera’s range - somebody steps out into the open, a slight figure with a dark hoodie on. Tab. Tab. Tab. They’re light on their feet, moving towards the coffee table beside the couch and crouching to peer beneath it, their hands on their knees. They don’t find what they’re looking for. They’re flinchy and nervous. 

Jeremy clicks through quicker now, desperate, screening through images so quickly that the frames almost blur together into one cohesive video. He watches the kid (this is absolutely a kid, and a creeping dread spreading through Jeremy tells him exactly who it is) as they stagger to their feet and over to a filing cabinet, searching through it with gloved hands. They grow increasingly frantic. It’s a boy, Jeremy thinks, with slim shoulders and shaky knees. Too young to be running from bullets.

They find something in the cabinet, a thick file with a yellow post-it note on the front. They clutch it close, then, and then there must be a noise outside of the office because their head snaps around to face the door and Jeremy’s jaw clenches with grim realisation.

It’s Gavin. It’s absolutely Gavin. He’s young, and he looks more scared than usual, but it’s him.

Some frenzy seems to take young-Gavin. He kicks over the couch and picks up a potted plant, throwing it against the window and smashing it. He’s trying to make it look like there was a robbery, Jeremy realises faintly, as he watches Gavin scatter the papers across the floor, watches him put his foot through the coffee table he was so delicate with just minute earlier. Then, he clambers across the room and the door beneath the camera flies open. Gavin is barely out of the window, dropping down out of sight into the sunlight, when the bullets hit the wall where he was just standing, shattering what’s left of the window, tearing through the blinds. 

Jeremy is so engrossed in clicking that he doesn’t realise when the barista brings his coffee until she coughs. 

“Oh, shit-“ Jeremy pulls himself away from the screen, conscious of how he has hunched over it. “Sorry. Uh, thank you.”

She gives an uncomfortable smile. “No problem, sir.”

Jeremy watches her leave and then turns his eyes back to the computer. He felt his breathing speed up at some point and now his heart is pounding hard in his chest, loud and quick. The last image shows the first that he saw - the ransacked office, the bullets in the wall. Stillness. Gavin is gone.

“Fuck,” Jeremy murmurs to himself. He takes a sip of his coffee and then tabs off of the preview page again.

Back in the 08-09-10 file, there is only one other item, a .pdf. Jeremy clicks on it, heart in his throat.

It’s a police report detailing a robbery. It’s filed by a business owner, P. Larson, and the business is marked down as Larson Data Processing Ltd. It’s marked as a report made in Bedfordshire county, England, on the tenth of August, the day after the robbery must have happened. 

There is no attached primary suspect, though P. Larson - marked as ‘Peter’ in marker on the scanned file - details in the body of text, with startlingly neat handwriting, that he has been receiving vocal and written intimidation through company communications (the company landline, he says, and who the fuck still used a landline in 2010? Jeremy doesn’t buy it) for months now, from who he suspects is a competitor’s business.

Jeremy googles Larson Data Processing in a separate tab, unsure of what he’s looking for. Apparently they’re still open. The second google result after their website is a news article by Bedfordshire Today from November, 2010, titled  _ ‘Local Business Owner Arrested On Charges Of Insurance Extortion and Money Laundering’. _

Jeremy, feeling his headache growing, clicks through.

The article lies somewhere between well-meaning and vaguely sensationalist. It’s nothing groundbreaking. Apparently, in late August it came to light that Peter Larson had paid somebody, presumed to be a friend or family member, to break into his offices and steal the company’s bank details, extorting money from the company’s insurance line by later faking bank records showing the extraction of money from the company’s accounts. Nothing special. Nothing notable, but for the fact that Jeremy knows two things:

That thief was Gavin, and for some reason, Gavin ended up in America only a day later. 

Nobody in the article seems to care much for Larson’s hired thief or his identity, which Jeremy appreciates. Nothing about the security footage is shown, though it is mentioned. Jeremy is at a dead end. 

He sits back in his seat and pulls out his phone. It’s coming up on four AM. Jeremy speed-dials Trevor, his third locked number after Michael and Gavin.

It takes Trevor one ring to pick up. In that moment, Jeremy knows he’s  _ fucked. _

“Having fun in my account there?” Trevor asks, as soon as he picks up.

“In my defence-“

Trevor snorts. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Amateur.”

“In my defence,” Jeremy tries again, “Listen- in my defence, I- I’m trying to find out some stuff for the crew.”

Trevor doesn’t buy it for a second. He’s too smart for that. “With my account, instead of Jack’s?”

“...Yes?” Jeremy tries.

Trevor laughs at him. He doesn’t seem to be taking it all too seriously, not from the surface, but Jeremy knows that deep down, he isn’t too happy right now.

“Listen,” Jeremy tries, “You- you just gotta trust me on this one, okay? If, like- you know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt the crew.”

“I know that,” Trevor says. Jeremy can practically hear him putting a hand over his eyes and rubbing his temples. “Jesus, Jeremy, I know that. If anybody in the A-Team is an open book, it’s you.”

Jeremy swallows his guilt at that. “Exactly.”

“But I gotta know.” Trevor pauses. “Why are you looking into Gavin?”

“I-“ Jeremy flails for an answer. Then, “He left again.”

“And he’s been doing that for five years. Longer. Why now?”

“Am I not allowed to be worried?”

“If worried makes you break into my account-“

Jeremy feels abruptly guilty. “I’m sorry, man…”

Trevor shakes off the apology. “Don’t say sorry to me. I’m good. Gavin might not want you poking around in his past, is all.”

Trying to think of a way around this, Jeremy wracks his brain for an excuse. “Michael mentioned something about him being in Britain again. Maybe. We don’t know for sure. I wanted to make sure he’s not going back to, like, bad people.”

Trevor is silent for a while. “If you wanted, you could have just asked me to look. If anybody’s gonna know, it’s me.”

“Or Geoff.”

“But you wouldn’t ask Geoff.”

Jeremy nods, shuddering. “He’d kill me.”

They sit in silence for a second, Trevor obviously thinking everything over. Then, he sighs. “Gavin came to America for the first time after he robbed some business or something for a guy. Got sent out to, like, somewhere on the east coast for a few weeks to lay low. He was already sorta in the business by then. He went back to England after a few weeks and got back into the business then. Came back to America for good in 2012. Is that enough for you?”

Jeremy clenches his jaw. “Not really, man…”

“I can’t give you much more.” Trevor sounds like he’s being honest when he says, “That’s pretty much all I know. I don’t spend my spare time picking through the others’ stuff, looking into their backgrounds. There’s no point in that.”

Guilt hits Jeremy again, solid and crushing like a truck. “I know. I just- wanna keep him out of trouble. I guess. I can do it on my own.”

“Not if I kick you out of the network.”

“But you wouldn’t do that.”

“Yes I would,” Trevor says. 

Jeremy scrambles for a rebuttal. “I just- I just wanna make sure he’s not caught up with any bad folks. Just for my own peace of mind. Trev. C’mon. Please. You can blame it on me if he finds out when he gets back.”

Trevor says, then, like he’s dropping a bomb on the whole thing, “Why are you at the airport, Jeremy?”

Jeremy puts a hand over the webcam. “Get the fuck out of my computer.”

“You’re in  _ my _ account!”

“I’m serious!”

“ _ I’m  _ serious!”

Jeremy keeps his thumb on the tiny camera before sighing and pulling it off. He shoots Trevor a middle finger. “Listen- this conversation never happened. Deal? You didn’t know, you didn’t keep anything from the others-“

“You want me to, what? Lie to Geoff?” Trevor demands. “Or, god forbid, Michael? Jeremy, he’d literally kill me. I’m not strong enough to fight that guy. He’d snap me in half over his knee like a glowstick. Snap, crackle and pop. All that shit.”

Jeremy says, “I don’t have much time- look, man, I’m calling a favour here. Okay? Promise me you won’t tell them where I’ve gone.”

“Running off to England, leaving me with this mess,” Trevor is muttering. Jeremy can tell he doesn’t really mean it. “Asshole. Get on that flight before Michael wakes up and realises you’re gone.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy says. “Seriously, Treyco, I owe you one-“

“Get outta here, Jeremy,” Trevor says. “Seriously.”

“Got it.” Jeremy hopes Trevor can hear his smile through the phone, and then remembers that he can probably see it through the webcam anyway. “See you in- uh-“ He thinks for a moment. “Like, uh, two weeks. Or less.”  _ Or more. _

“See you. Dickhead.” Trevor hangs up on him.

Jeremy sits back and checks the time. He’s got a few more hours to bury himself in research. 

Before he does, though - just out of curiosity - Jeremy dives into his own tag. He’s marked as RT2, which it takes him a moment to realise is a secondary tag for RT, the cockbites’ general tag, his standing for Rimmy Tim. Jeremy filters and clicks enter. 

There is nothing extraordinary. His tag has half the files that Gavin has, maybe less. The earliest dated files are from 2013 or so, when he first started popping up on the Fakes’ radar. There’s a copy of a police report on a shoplifting case in there, too, from the early 2000s, Jeremy barely a teenager and scowling in his mugshot around his black eye.

Nothing incriminating in here. Nothing about Kent, anyway, which is the important thing, Jeremy thinks, as he covers up the webcam with a sticker from his coffee cup and clicks out of his tag and back into Gavin’s, and settles down to work.

Trevor might have been good enough to get dirt on all of the others, but at least he has none on Jeremy. 

***

The flight is long and excruciatingly boring. Jeremy has never been so willing to sell his soul for internet access in his life.

He plays DoodleJump and Temple Run on his phone for the first three hours, squashed in next to a woman in a pantsuit and an older man who smells like he hasn’t showered in what might be a week or more. Jeremy turns off his phone, then, because even with aeroplane mode on he’s still paranoid that Michael or Ryan are going to pop up, asking where he is. They must have noticed by now. Surely, it has occurred to them that Jeremy is missing. Gavin might have a habit of vanishing like he was never there in the first place, but Jeremy’s business rarely takes him out of the city. 

Jeremy thinks back to the last time he went missing. It was three years ago, just about, and just after he, Gavin and Michael got together properly. Gavin and Michael had history but had never been something official until that point, and Jeremy was still testing the waters, still terrified of fucking up and being left to die in a ditch somewhere, because that was how things worked back on the east coast, how things had always been. 

He had been missing for three hours, picked off the side of the road by two masked men with a black van and rifles, when the crew came to get him. They barely managed to give Jeremy cracked ribs and a new scar down the side of his neck before Michael was crashing through the door like the devil was on his heels, but the only devil in the city that had mattered in that moment was him, a tailwind of machine gun fire in his wake, bright and wonderful and so, so stupid. 

Jeremy thinks if there was a moment in which he knew he was in love, it was then. It was that moment, sitting there drenched in his own blood, clutching his ribs to keep his guts in place, barely three hours after he’d stopped answering calls, stopped texting back.

_ You noticed, _ he remembers telling Michael vaguely, as they’d piled into the van outside, Gavin supporting him under one arm and laughing as Jeremy fell over his own feet.  _ That they got me. That I was gone. _

_ Of course we noticed, dumbass, _ Geoff answered, instead of any of Jeremy’s boys. It meant just as much. They’re all just as much family as the others to each other, have been since the start.  _ What, you thought we wouldn’t come? _

Jeremy wants to say yes, of course I thought you wouldn’t come, in this business you cut your losses and you move on, you don’t mourn the lackeys you leave behind. Instead, he says nothing, just allows himself to be pushed into the back of the getaway van and driven back home.

Yes. There’s no way they won’t notice he’s gone. 

Jeremy falls asleep briefly on the plane every now and then, struggling to keep his eyes open with layover exhaustion from the previous job. The sleep never lasts long, though, not as long as Jeremy would like, and so he closes his eyes and leans his head back and just does his best not to think too hard between brief bouts of sleep.

The flight passes excruciatingly slowly.

By the time the plane touches down, it’s stupid-o-clock in the morning in England, and it’s blustery and freezing cold as Jeremy stumbles down the metal steps out of the plane alongside other faceless businessmen, criminals he thinks he might recognise if he cared to look. There are no parents with children coming out of Los Santos for vacation. It’s starting to pick with ice-cold rain, too. 

Jeremy gets through customs without much trouble. The security guard at the border scrutinises his face a little more closely, these British pigs more thorough than those more used to crime and fraudulence, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t make a fuss. If he does recognise Jeremy, he says nothing.

Jeremy stumbles through arrivals in a daze, stopping only to splash his face with cold water in the bathroom. Then, he steps out into the night outside of the terminal, into London.

It’s not exactly on the city’s doorstep. There are shuttle buses and miles upon miles of car parking space, and beyond the terminal, the runway. No skyscrapers. No looming city, not that Jeremy can see.

He flags down a cab around the back of the parking lot, gets into the backseat and shakes the rain out of his hair. 

“Where to?” The driver doesn’t seem to want to hang around to chat, not at two in the morning. 

“Uh,” Jeremy says, “Nearest hotel that would take me, uh, right now.”

The guy nods. “Got it.”

The drive goes in silence. Jeremy fiddles with the zip on his jacket for a while, staring out into the rainy night, until it occurs to him to turn his phone on. 

It’s late evening back home. If there was any doubt that they’ve noticed the note and the missing bike, it goes away when Jeremy powers up his phone and turns off the flight-safe mode.

Immediately, he is slammed with notifications. Two missed calls from Ryan. Five from Jack. Seven from Geoff. Jeremy grimaces. Twelve from Michael. Dozens more from the B-Team, and from a handful of affiliates, and even one from Haus. 

Hundreds of texts, too, which sucks, because not only does Jeremy have dozens of Michael’s panicky, angry messages directly, but he’s in half of the group chats where everybody is losing their minds - the B-Team group chat, which nobody had the heart to remove him from, is full of speculation and upset, Trevor conspicuously silent. The A-Team group chat is mostly just Jack posting updates on her digging, which Jeremy knows won’t turn up much. If his past wasn’t in their files before, they won’t find it now, at least not yet. 

As Jeremy stares at his phone even now, another call comes through. It’s Ryan. 

Before he can stop himself, Jeremy picks up. He doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing, not immediately.

Ryan has no such reservations. There’s the sound of a chair being pushed back. “Jeremy?”

In the background there are twin outraged yells from Michael and Geoff. 

“He answered  _ you _ ?!” Michael explodes. 

“Shut  _ up _ !” Geoff says, disbelieving.

“Hi, Ryan,” Jeremy says, awkwardly. “Uh. So, uh, I’m sorry I caused a big stir.”

Ryan lets out a short, unhappy laugh. “I’m gonna pass you over to Geoff.”

“Don’t pass him over to Geoff!” Michael’s voice shouts in the background, “Dumbass, pass him over to me!”

Jeremy is, in the end, passed over to Geoff, but only after Geoff promises to put him on speaker. He hears all four of them crowd around the phone.

“Jeremy,” Geoff says, “Whoever nabbed you, you don’t have to say who it was. We’re gonna track your phone right now-“

“Geoff-“

“And we’re gonna come get you, so just sit tight and wait for Michael to come in all guns blazing-“

_ “Geoff-“ _

“And-“

“Geoff,” Jack cuts in, “Let him speak, Jesus.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy says, before he can be interrupted again. “Geoff, you won’t be able to track it.”

“What-“ Geoff pulls up short. “They wired it? We can get through that, Jer-“

_ I’m across international waters, _ Jeremy thinks grimly.  _ Good luck tracking this in weeks, let alone a day. _ What he says is, “Nobody took me. I’m okay.”

“They might have him hostage,” Jack murmurs, like Jeremy can’t hear her.

“I’m not-“

“J,” Michael says, “Hey, Jeremy, that note was not detailed enough. Like, I couldn’t get anything from that. Illiterate fucker.”

Jeremy knows he’s trying to make him laugh, like Jeremy is afraid of hurt or something. But he’s not, which is the frustrating part, so he says, “Michael, I’m fine. I swear.”

“Then where are you?” There’s a feral sort of frustration on the edges of Michael’s voice now. Jeremy feels immensely, terribly guilty. “Because you’re not here.”

“I-“ Jeremy chooses his words carefully. “This whole thing is about trust, right?”

“Sure,” Geoff says, sounding distinctly miffed. 

“I- you guys are gonna have to trust me on this one.” Jeremy swallows. He makes brief eye contact with the driver in the rear-view mirror. He shoots Jeremy a bored look and doesn’t seem to care much.

There is silence on the other end for a moment. Then, Jack says, “Jeremy-“

Michael explodes, “Just tell us what’s going on!”

Jeremy winces. “Nothing’s- you’re just gonna have to take my word for this. I can’t just go around, like- y’know. Talking about this stuff.”

“What, are you tapped?” Geoff demands.

“No,” Jeremy tells him calmly, feeling increasingly irritated. “I’ll be back in, like, a few weeks, max.”

“And you can’t tell us where you are?” Ryan clarifies, sounding like he’s frowning. 

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Geoff asks.

“Because-“ Jeremy sighs and goes with the truth. “Because it’s not my secret to tell, okay? I’m- helping out a friend, because they asked me to. And I just gotta get it over with, and then I’ll come home, and it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

“Is this about Gavin?” Michael asks. 

“No,” Jeremy says, before making the conscious decision to lie about it. “It’s not. This is something else. But I’m fine. It’s nothing to get all- all weird about- seriously, guys, I’m okay. I’m okay.” 

There’s silence on the other end. Then, Geoff mutters, “This is bullshit.”

There is muffled movement as he hands the phone back off to who Jeremy assumes must be Ryan, and Jeremy hears his voice getting more distant as he must leave the room. Jack’s voice follows him, too.

“You’re off speaker,” Michael tells him. “Jeremy-“

“I’m okay,” Jeremy says again. “Michael, I swear. Nothing bad happened. I just- I just have some stuff to deal with, for good, and then I’m gonna come back and Gavin is gonna come back and everything is gonna be okay.”

Michael stays quiet for a little while. Then, he says, “I hate you.”

Jeremy knows he doesn’t mean it. “I know. I’m sorry, man.”

“Just stay in contact, okay? And don’t fucking die.” Michael emphasises the last part. “I’m serious. I’ll kill you if you die.”

“Got it,” Jeremy tells him. Then, words neither of them says very often, “I love you.”

Michael snorts. “Asshole. Text me back next time.”

Jeremy almost blurts out that he’s been on a plane for twelve hours. Instead, he says nothing, just listens as Michael gives Ryan his phone back.

Ryan says nothing for a second, awkward and unsure. Then, he says, “What they said. Don’t die. Battle Buddies, right?”

“Right.” Jeremy rubs his face to try to push back his migraine. “Right. Battle Buddies. Right. Okay. I gotta go, Ry.”

“I know.” Ryan pauses. “Goodnight. Stay safe.” 

Jeremy feels like he’s talking to his dad all over again, except it’s ten times more awkward. “You, too, buddy.”

Ryan hangs up. Jeremy is left, once again, alone, unsure of which way he’s headed, what he’s even doing.

When he is dropped off at the hotel, Jeremy pays in dollars, as it’s all he has. The driver cusses him out without much heat to it. He pays for a room at the grotty, grimy front desk by card, and then reaches his bed in time to flop onto it and almost pass out. 

One more thing before sleep, though. Jeremy pulls his phone back out and calls Gavin.

Gavin picks up on the last ring. “Jeremy?”

“I’m in England,” Jeremy tells him. “You better not be in, like, Italy, or some shit.”

Gavin laughs hollowly. “My family’s from Italy, y’know.”

Jeremy doesn’t want to admit that he does know that, that he found it in the files last night. Instead, he says, “In the morning, which way am I going?”

Gavin’s breathing goes stilted and unsure. Then, all of a sudden, he says, “I gotta go.”

Before Jeremy can protest, Gavin has hung up. When he calls back, it goes straight to voicemail.

Jeremy throws his phone against the wall in frustration. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments really do mean the world to me! thank you for reading!


	3. so you wanna make some money?

Jeremy hits the city early.

London is vast and sprawling, not tight and compact like Los Santos or, god forbid, Boston. The horizon, by daylight, is a clumsy mass of undulating skyscrapers and apartment blocks, the financial district framed against the morning sky. Jeremy wonders if he’ll see the Thames while he’s here. He’s never been to England before. There won’t be much time for sightseeing.

Gavin doesn’t pick up in the morning, still. He cuts Jeremy off after three rings. Jeremy cuts that loss and sets off before it’s properly light, knowing he doesn’t have time to waste, not if he wants to descend on the city while Gavin is still in it.

Then again - that’s assuming Gavin is in London at all. It’s quite the presumption to make, but Jeremy takes it, because apart from Bedfordshire, it’s the only connection he’s got.

He hitches a ride further into the city to a roadside services, where the guy drops Jeremy off. Everybody here is sullen-faced and unhappy, but the man gives Jeremy a two pound coin for a coffee, and they part ways with something almost like friendliness. It feels less sprawling than America. Tighter, less like you can just run and run if you get caught. Less like there’s anywhere to run in the first place. The river is close and the coast not much farther than that. The whole island is barely a ten hour drive end-to-end. At least in a place like London, one can disappear into the crowd. 

(Then again, that doesn’t exactly improve Jeremy’s prospects.)

At the services, he finds an exchange booth, takes out a few hundred in British Sterling to last the next few days. Jeremy gets himself that coffee after sitting in the bathroom for five minutes nursing his headache, listening to a father with two sons attempt to wrangle them outside. When he catches his own reflection in the mirror, Jeremy does his best to ignore his pallid skin, the circles under his eyes. His hair is blue right now (and at least it’s not purple, because that would be far too distinctive), but it’s growing out mousey at the roots. 

He looks a mess. Jeremy splashes water in his face and grabs that coffee, and then settles down in front of his laptop in a corner of the Costa.

Back into Gavin’s files it is.

Trevor still hasn’t kicked him out of his account yet, which Jeremy appreciates. He’s decent, really, and it’s not like he doesn’t want Gavin back, too. It’s stupidly early - or late, Jeremy supposes - back home. He wonders how many of them are awake trying to find him. The thought makes him shudder and he dives into the GB tag before it can pull him in.

‘11-28-10’ is the next Gavin file he looks into. It’s a few months later, closing in on the end of the year, and he figures it must include something to do with what business Gavin ended up in during that interim, that period between his time returning to the UK after living on the east coast for a few weeks in September of 2010 and his final departure to Los Santos in 2012. 

The file is short and sparse. It includes only another scanned police report, one video file, a web link and an audio file.

Jeremy clicks on the police report first. It’s been filed by an individual this time, not a company. A woman called Leona Griffiths. A google search brings up no immediate results, and Jeremy scans the report. Apparently, she was mugged while walking home one night in eastern London, which doesn’t sound too odd to Jeremy until he searches her name again and, on the second page, she is mentioned as the sister of another woman. Alexandra Griffiths. 

Searching her brings up far more.

Alexandra grew up in inner London, criminal by the time she was fifteen. She would reportedly light fires in local policemen’s houses. The last report on her that Jeremy can find is from eight years ago, a footnote in a report on gang violence issues in London that states that she was found strangled in her own home and that no suspects are being investigated.

Jeremy goes back to the report. Leona has no criminal record. She was stabbed and left to die outside of an apartment block, none of her belongings taken. The truth of it doesn’t need to be spelled out for Jeremy to understand it. Somebody was going fo her sister, and they got the wrong girl. 

Leona survived, though, according to the attached medical report. Jeremy googles her name and adds ‘stabbing’ and finds a section of an interview from all that time ago where Leona spoke to a reporter about her experience as a victim of a random act of violence.  _ Random. Ha. _ Jeremy wonders whether she knew what her sister had become by then.

_ Somebody saved me, see, _ Leona apparently told the journalist during her interview.  _ I don’t know his name, but a boy dragged me out to where I could be seen, and somebody called an ambulance. It’s all confusing.  _

Cold chills down his spine, Jeremy pulls his sweatshirt tighter around himself, glancing around. There’s nobody in here watching him. It’s mostly men in suits buying coffee, or families with kids. 

That was Gavin. Jeremy doesn’t know how he knows it, but he does. Whoever shoved all of these files together knew, too, whoever it was that Trevor siphoned them from.

He goes back to the file. The web link is dead and leads nowhere. Just a 404. The audio file is of the 999 call, a woman with a cockney accent telling the operator in a panicked voice that she thinks there’s a woman that has been stabbed in the street across the road, lying in the gutter. That she didn’t see it happen, but the woman has been lying there for at least a minute now, not moving. 

The video file is where it gets interesting.

Jeremy clicks through. It’s a home video, fuzzy and amateur, recorded on a camera that may or may not be from the mesozoic period by the looks of the quality. The feed focuses in on a man sitting in the centre of the shot, in front of a dark window, the city wide behind him. The walls alongside the panes are scratched and peeling. The man - he’s scrappy and slight like a teenager, but more hunched, more hostile than Gavin - is wearing a white mask with black paint at the corners of the lips. Dark eyes stretched with translucent black film stare into the camera. 

It takes a moment for the man to start talking. “You start finishing our fucking jobs for us,” he starts, “And we’ll finish this whole bloody thing, you heard us, Grunchy? This whole fuckin’ thing.”

Grunchy. The name is familiar. Jeremy swears he’s heard it before, but he can’t place it.

He keeps watching. The man stares down the camera like he’s maddogging Jeremy himself. He has to do his best not to shudder. 

“Griffiths has gotta die. Can’t let her stay alive, not with what she knows. You know how the fuck-“ and the guy flips his knife out of his pocket, somebody behind the camera laughing darkly- “You know how the fuck this works. You and your guy, whatever the fuck his name is. The kid that saved her, some kinda hero. Stay out of our way, or we’ll get in yours.”

Jeremy sits back in his seat, making sure his headphones are secure. God forbid anybody else hearing any of this. He angles his screen away from the room at large and keeps watching. 

The masked man stares for a second longer. Then, he tips back his head and laughs. He’s got the British accent that Jeremy knows he’s predisposed to associate with something other than the violence he’s grown up in the lap of, in America’s fiercely terroristic deathtrap, but that laugh is pure fire. Pure blood. Like this guy would, if he could, take that knife to Grunchy’s throat right now.

Gavin’s, too. This video is about him, too.

The video goes dead. Jeremy stares at his own reflection in the screen, unsure and unhappy. Then, he checks on the location of the stabbing. Mile End. 

That- that does ring a bell. 

Jeremy pulls out his phone to make a few calls. 

***

None of the Fakes’ extended syndicate lies outside of America. Not many of them live far out of California, honestly - Los Santos and LA are the primary spots to find most of their affiliates. However, there are definitely groups they’re a little more friendly with in England than others. 

Praying that Geoff won’t kill him later, Jeremy uses his name and a little bit of lying to get an in with a group he knows from north London. Inner city heisters, Jeremy is pretty sure, though they’ve got fingers in other pies too, in the smuggling circles of south-west England. Recreational drugs, mostly. Humans, sometimes. It’s not a pretty business, but Jeremy isn’t here to judge, nor to learn. He’s only here for information.

He poses as an ambassador for Geoff - Rimmy Tim, well-known Fake, come down from Los Santos to meet with them and scope them out for a deal in the future, maybe, if everything works out. This lot don’t even have a name. They’re small fry. Jeremy knows they’ll be trying to impress. 

He cuts through to their base by midday, letting the cab drop him a street away. Common courtesy. You never want to get civvies tied into any of this - or, at least, that’s how Jeremy assumes it is around here, too. 

It’s not a nice area. It’s about five miles out of Mile End, too, everything on top of everything out here, and it’s all cracked pavement and boarded-up windows. Jeremy holds himself like a person who isn’t afraid of being stabbed, because that’s the best way he’s been taught to not get stabbed, and it hasn’t failed him yet.

The entrance to the base he’s been given is around the back of a warehouse, innocuous but not innocuous enough. They’ll have to move if they ever come under real fire by the law, because they’re right out in the open here, shoved between two sets of semi-detached terraced flats occupied by residents who very obviously avoid the general vicinity of the warehouse like it’s the plague.

Jeremy knocks on the door around the back. Nobody answers for a moment. Then, footsteps, and the door opens. 

The woman that opens the door is surprisingly young. She’s got short, dark hair and light brown skin, and she’s whippet-thin like Gavin. When she speaks, it’s with an American accent.

“You’re the Fake guy?”

“That’s me.” In civvy attire and no doubt looking absolutely wrecked, Jeremy feels awkward standing there.

She smiles thinly at him. “They sent me out to talk to you first ‘cause I’m American, too.”

“I guessed.” Jeremy sticks out a hand for her to shake. “Rimmy Tim.”

She takes it. “Nova.”

Jeremy frowns before he can help himself. “You know that one’s taken, right? Nova of, uh-“ He struggles to decide where to place the guy. “Hub fame?”

“I know.” Nova shrugs. “Nobody knows who he is here. Just call me Fiona, then.”

“Sure.”

Jeremy follows her into the dark interior of the warehouse, one hand on his pocket knife. He doesn’t have his gun, didn’t want to risk trying to get it through customs. Getting the bone knife Ryan gave him last year through in his boot was laughably easy.

“I’m the weapons gal,” she explains to him, tossing a set of keys up and down absently in her hand. She’s wearing heavy boots. “Ended up in the UK five years back, give or take. Stayed ever since.”

“How old are you?”

She shrugs. “Twenty-three. Ish. I lose count. Been here since I was eighteen, anyway. Hey, sit down.”

Jeremy sits down across from her on an old, beat-up couch. Sunlight streams down through a glass section of the wall that looks like somebody put it in place haphazardly just to get a little light in, the glass all dusty and thick. 

In the light, Fiona’s face looks a lot harsher, but she’s not unfriendly.

“So,” she says. “What can we do for you?”

“A few things.” Jeremy is good at this, at least. Keeping his cool. Keeping people on his side. Lying, too. He’s startlingly good at lying, Michael has told him in the past, when he puts his heart into it.

“We’re all ears.”

“I wanted to see how you run things down here,” Jeremy starts. Might as well get them drawn in first. “See if there’s anything we can do to form a… partnership. We’re considering expanding.”

Fiona raises an eyebrow. “Oh. Unexpected.”

“Is it?”

“Seemed you were doing fine in LS.”

“Well.” Jeremy shrugs, light-shouldered. “There’s fine, and then there’s us. Always shooting for more, us fakes.”

Fiona laughs, a little startled, still comfortable where she sits.”I guess.”

“I also-“ Jeremy leans in, like he’s being conspiratorial- “I wanted to ask a few things of a gang like yours, here in London, about some… events from a few years back. Just under the table. Not a formal information exchange, but I think you could help me out.”

Fiona’s smile widens a little. She doesn’t buy it, but she won’t say it, Jeremy knows. She’s like him. “Alright,” she says, “I’m sure some of us can help with that. Help you feel out the area, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy agrees. “Yeah, just about that.”

She nods. Then, the rest of her gang begin to emerge from around the rest of the base like sheepish stray cats, and Jeremy is able to get to work. 

To keep the act up, he has them spend the afternoon showing him heist plans, smuggling routes, contacts. Cold, hard cash, too, most of which is stored in a storage bin under their base, because bank records are flimsy when it comes to this business and it’s happened far too often that some upstarts have appeared to have it too good to be true before dipping from the map because somebody scammed their money out of them. 

They’re not a bad group. Innocuous, mostly. The type of criminals who go home to wives and husbands and kids at the end of the day, who only do this because they have no other choice. Fiona is the only one with any real personality. 

Jeremy pretends to show moderate interest through the meeting. In actuality, he doesn’t care much. As the sun goes down, the group’s leader (his name slips Jeremy’s mind - he’s a Londoner through and through, hard-browed and not too bothered with Jeremy, either), Fiona and Jeremy settle down back in the base to talk more casually.

“Fiona told me you’ve got questions,” the man tells Jeremy.

Jeremy nods. “Nothing too pressing. We want to feel out the area before making contacts so far from home and there are a few… issues that we’d like to monitor. It would be nice to see your opinions on it all, if that’s okay?”

“Of course,” the leader nods. From his side, Fiona puffs out her cheeks like she’s going to blow a raspberry, looking bored.

Jeremy starts off light. “Tell me about some of the crews in the area.”

“Well,” the leader says, “There aren’t many of us. Most of them are further south, east side. Mile End area, down to Whitechapel, if you’re looking at heisters. There are a couple of smaller groups in the area, mostly kids-“

He rattles through half a dozen small-time gangs. None of them are on the level of these guys, which is saying a lot, considering how small-fish this group seem to be. They’re the only smugglers for blocks, anyway, and they don’t seem interested in treading on toes. Jeremy can only hope they don’t have any enemies. If somebody is watching them, they’re now watching him, too. 

“Alright,” Jeremy says, once the man finishes up summarising the general area. He keeps the illusion of interest going. “I’ve got some questions about specific people, if you could lend a hand there-“

“Sure,” the leader says, though he looks apprehensive. “If we can.”

“Of course.” Jeremy clears his throat and decides to jump right into it. “Have you ever heard the name Grunchy?”

Fiona and the leader exchange startled glances. Fiona turns back to Jeremy and says, “Who hasn’t?”

“Elaborate?”

“I mean,” Fiona says, “I don’t know who he is back home, but here, Grunchy is probably the biggest name we’ve got, or at least, he was until the last few years. Still hanging around. A heister, mostly, big elaborate stuff. He’s got a lot of guys after his head.”

“I see,” Jeremy says. “We’d heard of him.”

“He wouldn’t be much of a threat,” the leader puts in, and Jeremy scrutinises him. “He’s not unfriendly, particularly. Wouldn’t come after you unless you came after him, first.”

“Where is he based?”

Fiona shrugs. Beside her, looking uncomfortable, the leader says, “You’re asking us to get into risky territory.”

Jeremy decides to play his cards a little bolder. “I’m sorry. I was thinking we could trust you.”

The leader backtracks hard. “He used to run on Mile End, back in the day, ten or so years ago. Now he’s based near the city centre, by the river. Half a mile down from Whitechapel, there or there about.”

It’s almost an exact location. Jeremy could cry. 

“Did you have other questions?” The leader looks apprehensive now. He’s looking around himself like they’re about to be walked in on. 

“Uh, yes, a few.” Jeremy wracks his brain for something inconspicuous to say, then gives up. “We’ve heard about Grunchy having an accomplice,” he decides on, then, out of the blue. Fuck it. “Somebody who runs with him.”

Fiona laughs. “That guy? I think he died, like, years ago. Hasn’t been seen in so long, since before I got here, anyway.”

The leader nods in assent. “I couldn’t remember his name, now. Some thief, I think. He got on the bad side of Legacy in 2010, ended up in hot water. He’s been gone for years.”

Jeremy nods. “Dead?”

“Assumed to be,” the leader agrees. 

Legacy. Jeremy has a sneaking suspicion of who they are. “Tell me about Legacy.”

“Them?” Fiona snorts. “They’re like- look, sorry, boss, I gotta say it. They’re scumbags. They’ve been around for, like, years, and all they do is run deals with other gangs to fuck them over. They started up on Mile End too. Got a little flack, got on the police’s radar, after they went after this, like, ex-con, and they got her sister instead. Since then they just team with other gangs to use them as scapegoats. Dozens of smaller groups end up dead because of them.”

That’s a whole lot of information. Jeremy digests it all in silence, nodding.

The leader nudges Fiona, hard. “That’s out of line.”

“But it’s true. We shouldn’t be afraid of them.”

“Where are they based?” Jeremy asks.

“I don’t know,” the leader says, before Fiona can speak. “Somewhere on the east side. It’s hard to know exactly, they’re very secretive. Look, is this all when it comes to questions about other gangs?”

“Yes.” Jeremy shakes himself. “I’m sorry. I got curious, I hope that wasn't out of line?”

He flashes the man a winning smile. The guy scowls and then says, stiffly, “It’s fine.”

Jeremy stands up. “Thank you for answering my questions.” He sticks his hand out. “All being well, you should receive a call soon, and we can talk numbers then. Thank you for being so… hospitable.”

The leader shakes his hand firmly. “It was good to meet you. Fiona, if you could show him out-“

“On it,” Fiona tells him. She grins at Jeremy and leads him back out the back way, and then closes the door behind both of them.

Jeremy blinks at her. “Was there something you wanted?”

“I know you’re not gonna come back.” She fishes in her pocket and pulls out a pen, and grabs Jeremy’s arm before he can stop her, scribbling her number across it. “If you need a hand, you know who to call.”

“I-“ Jeremy blinks. “It’s all being considered-“

“If you were gonna hire us, it would be the Golden Boy here, not you.” Fiona shrugs. “It’s fine, man. No bad blood or anything. Just- I want to get out of here. Back home, y’know? So if you need anything, shoot me a call.”

Jeremy stays quiet for a second. Then, he says, “Thank you, Nova.”

“No problem.” Fiona turns to head back inside, and then something else seems to occur to her. “Hey. You’re trying to find Legacy, right?”

“If I can.”

“They’re in a flat in the city centre,” Fiona tells him. She grabs his arm and writes out another address, a flat number. “Should find them there, I think. If not, let me know, I can suss them out.”

Jeremy swells with gratitude. “Thank you. Seriously, this helps a lot.”

“It’s fine.” Fiona brushes him off. “Now go, dumbass, before somebody starts watching.” 

Jeremy steps back. He shoots her a salute. “You’ll be hearing from me soon!”

It’s a white lie and both of them know it. Fiona smiles a thin smile and says, “Yeah, yeah,” as she heads back inside. She shuts the door behind her, and Jeremy is alone.

He heads back out front and around the corner. Then, just out of sight of the base and feeling distinctly guilty, he fishes in his pocket and pulls out the set of keys he palmed from Fiona as she wrote her number on his arm. There’s a black motorbike parked around the side of the building with a blocky rainbow printed on the back hood, and he knows it’s hers without having to think about it. 

“Sorry, Fiona,” Jeremy mutters as he starts up her bike. He only takes the bike key, leaves the others on the ground. Sitting back, he feels the reassuring rumble of the engine beneath him and knows that, at least now, he has an escape if he needs it. 

Jeremy pulls out and revs up, then roars down the street and around the corner, leaving the base behind for good. He can almost convince himself he doesn’t feel too bad about it. 

Hopefully, he can return it sometime. Jeremy doubts it, though. 

***

As night falls and Jeremy pulls back up to the hotel, his phone goes off. At first, irrationally, he thinks it’s Fiona, and he parks right around the back of the hotel, out of sight of any cameras and of the main road. Then, he gets off the bike and fishes around in his pocket for his phone, pulling it out. 

It’s Michael.

Sighing and leaning back against the wall, Jeremy answers. “Hello?”

“Jeremy,” Michael says, a little incredulous, and then, “Guys, yo, shut up, he answered.”

The background chatter goes quiet.

“Good to hear from you,” Michael says, after a second. Jeremy knows he’s on speaker. “You doing good?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says dismissively. “Yeah, Michael, I’m fine. More than fine. Doing great.”

Michael snorts. “Mmhm. Believable.”

“You’re not hurt?” Jack asks from nearby.

“Nope,” Jeremy tells her. “I’m fine. Honestly. I, uh- I’ve been travelling all day, haven’t gotten in any scuffles.”

“We’ve been-“ Somebody tries to shush Ryan and he carries on, deep voice a little unsure, “We’ve been debating having somebody there waiting for you in Boston for when you arrive. I think we shouldn’t.”

“Ryan,” Michael bites out, “What the fuck. That was a plan.”

“I’m with Ryan on this one,” Geoff says. “Jeremy, if you’re telling the truth abut being safe-“

Jeremy is still reeling at the fact that they think he’s going to Boston. After a moment, he decides not to refute it. “I don’t think that would help anything.”

“Might help keep you from dying, dumbass,” Michael snaps. He gets snappish when he’s tired. 

Jeremy sighs. “You can all stop worrying. I swear I’m okay.”

“We’re not worrying-“ Jack starts.

“Yes, they are,” Ryan cuts in.

Jeremy should have known Ryan would be the only one to put any faith in him about this. Gavin might have, too, but he’s not here.

“I’ll be back soon,” Jeremy says. “I promise. And I miss you too, Michael.”

Michael lets out a dismissive noise. “Shut the fuck up, Jeremy. Just get home.”

“I know,” Jeremy tells him. He feels abruptly exhausted. “I know.”

Michael starts saying something else, but then, across the busy street, Jeremy spots something that makes his blood run cold. 

“Shit,” Jeremy says. “Fuck. Fucking shit.”

“What-“

He’s already crouched low to the ground, praying that the man across the street in the distinctive white mask, big black eyes, can’t see him. The man is watching the hotel, obviously waiting for somebody to come out or leave. He must have not seen Jeremy yet, he thinks.

That’s the guy from the video. Without a doubt. 

On the other end of the phone, Geoff is saying, “Jeremy, what the fuck-“

“I gotta call you back,” Jeremy says, quickly. 

He hears Michael’s outraged  _ no!  _ but it’s too late. Jeremy hangs up and shoves his phone into his pocket as the masked man starts to cross the street, and then makes a break for the bike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments really do mean so much to me, please take the time to leave one if you can!


	4. trying to say something at all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait lads! had to replot and now we’re looking at a slightly longer lad for this one, chapters should come up quicker proceeding! enjoy!

Out of all of the countries in the world to be on the run across from masked maniacs, it’s just Jeremy’s luck that he’s ended up in the only one where everybody drives on the wrong damn side of the road.

He ends up in the wrong lane twice, curb-checks half a dozen times before he’s even out the end of the first street, and then he’s roaring around the corner, a white van hot on his heels, Fiona’s bike rumbling hot and loud beneath him. 

Michael is going to rip him limb from limb when he gets back, Jeremy thinks, and then he slams into oncoming traffic, barely swerves around a screeching sports car in time to land haphazard between lanes, shooting like a dart between motorists and up the busy street. Dozens of cars honk, disgruntled drivers leaning out to give Jeremy a piece of their minds. The English accent is comedically irritable, Jeremy thinks, and it would be funny if he wasn’t running for his life, which kind of sucks the fun out of everything.

He almost hits the back of a moving truck so hard that Jeremy thinks he might go barrelling through the tarp across one side and out the other. He just barely swerves to the left, spinning off at a tangent, feels the bike scrape against a dividing rail in the middle of the road and revving up again to cut back between the traffic. 

Around the corner at the bottom of the street, in the direction Jeremy just came from, the van comes screeching around a corner and its tail end whips into the back of another car, a four-by-four that barely budges with the brush. Jeremy slaps a middle finger behind him and roars off down the road.

“Alright,” he says to himself, and it comes out as a yell to be audible over the wind, “Heading to Grunchy’s earlier than expected!”

Jeremy cuts through the traffic to the lights at the end of the street and then barely avoids an oncoming cab, veering around the shooting car and taking a sharp turn around the intersection that ends up too sharp, almost taking Jeremy up onto the pavement, where there are a few outraged yells and he faintly registers a few people jumping out of the way. 

He screeches up the side of the curb and then back down onto the flat and around a parked car, which blows its horn to let Jeremy know promptly that it is not, in fact, parked, and then Jeremy is flying past and hits the next cluster of traffic, manoeuvring around standstill cars and forever peering over his shoulder to check for the white van. Any second now. At least Jeremy has the advantage that even if out here in the open he can’t hide, at least he can run. 

The white van swerves into view up ahead, at the end of the street in the direction Jeremy is running. When he turns to look back over his shoulder, he spots the masked man cutting through crowds up the pavement on the left side of the road towards him, and he’s holding something that is probably some sort of knife.

“Fuck,” Jeremy says. When the light turns green at the end of the road, he makes a split-second decision and pulls his bike into a U-turn, turning and driving right back into oncoming traffic.

It is not like in the movies. Jeremy doesn’t dodge between cars like a bullet fired from a gun, doesn’t skirt through danger and make it out barely unscathed. He hits a light grey Mercedes head on, smashing into the hood, and goes flying over the handlebars and into the windscreen, which audibly cracks.

In the chaos, cars swerving and the bike thrown to the pavement with its wheels still spinning, Jeremy feels his nose break on something hard, bones cracking like an eggshell. He slides off the side of the hood and barely gathers his legs beneath him before he’s up and running, through the crowded cars around the wreck, up onto the pavement. He can feel blood on his face and people are yelling at him from every direction, and Jeremy pulls the wrecked, smoking bike upright and slides on, screeching back out onto the road and hitting the right lane this time.

Somebody steps out into the road ahead of Jeremy now. It’s the man with the mask, and he looks ready to kill - or ready to die, with how resolutely he’s standing in Jeremy’s lane. Ten feet away. Five. Three. 

_ Hit me, _ the man’s eyes say through the mask. In the video, Jeremy couldn’t see them. Now, he thinks he could make out their mockery from a mile away..  _ Come on. Let’s okay chicken.  _

_ Alright, motherfucker. _

Jeremy hits the guy before even deciding that he wants to. The man barely avoids the impact with a last-second step to the side, but his leg gets caught under the bike anyway and he goes down yelling, the bike whipping to the side, tyres shrieking against the pavement. Jeremy just revs up harder and pushes through until the front wheel comes loose from what he hopes is just the man’s clothes. Then he’s driving again, and he leaves the man on the ground.

Jeremy roars around the corner and then another, faster and faster, likely breaking a dozen traffic laws. The roads on either side begin to blur and all sound goes pitchy and dulled, and he realizes, as he barely avoids collision with a highway maintenance worker, that he’s bleeding a lot, specifically from the head and nose, and that this probably doesn’t offer good prospects for his sustained ability to drive a motorbike in a city he doesn’t know. 

Chancing a look over his shoulder at an intersection, Jeremy sees no sign of the white van or the masked man, who might be nothing more than a fine paste ground into the pavement at this point. He looks up and takes in the sight of a sign pointing towards the city centre.

Bingo.

Jeremy drives for what must be fifteen minutes before he can’t drive any more. He parks up Fiona’s bike in an alleyway a few blocks from what he assumes to be the city centre and then stumbles his way down a backstreet and collapses rather ungracefully on his ass against the wall further into the darkness. 

“Shit,” Jeremy murmurs to himself. He reaches up to feel his forehead and his hand comes away soaked red.

Something is vibrating. Jeremy feels for his phone and pulls it out, and Geoff’s caller ID pops up.

Jeremy answers. Immediately, Geoff’s voice is saying in his ear, “Asshole, what happened?”

“Uh,” Jeremy says, “I thought I saw somebody. It was, uh, nothing. I’m fine.”

“Okay, obligatory lie out of the way,” Jack’s voice says, “Jeremy, we’re coming to get you, this has gone too far.”

“I’m fine!” 

“You sound _ dead!” _ Geoff explodes. 

“Well I’m not,” Jeremy refutes, proud of himself for that one. “Or I wouldn’t be talking.”

“Let me at ‘im,” Michael’s voice says in the background. There is a frantic fumbling and Geoff gives an outraged yelp, and then Michael is far closer, saying, “I can tell you’re, like, bleeding or concussed or something, asshole. Stay where you are. Somebody’s gonna come get you and then you’re coming home.”

“I’m not concussed,” Jeremy says, like the mere proposition is ludicrous. “I’m fine.”

“Where are you?”

Jeremy can’t remember the street name. “Somewhere far away. Looking for a guy. I think I’m close to him by now.”

“Fuck,” Michael groans. “I hate you. I hate you so much. What the fuck happened, Jeremy?”

“A guy ran me off my bike.”

“The bike we found parked outside of the LS airport last night?”

Jeremy swears. “That one.”

Michael says, “I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what happened, but you gotta tell us what’s happening, J. You gotta. You can’t do this on your own, whatever it is.”

That isn’t meant to sting, but it does. Jeremy says, “Ow.”

“Sorry. But if you’re bleeding out somewhere, then I’m right.”

Jeremy thinks for a long time, planning on responding when his head is a little more together. He finds himself drifting, slowly, gradually, and then all at once he is back in his body, the others yelling at him like he’s died or something. 

Jeremy says, “Sorry! Sorry, sorry, I stopped listening. Zoned out. I’m good, I’m good. Michael, stop shouting, god.”

Michael practically growls, “Jeremy, please tell us you’re not, like, dying or something. Please. I’m losing it over here.”

“I’m not, like, dying,” Jeremy repeats, “Or something.”

“Don’t be smart,” Jack says.

“Sorry.” 

The others are obviously a mess of frantic activity on the other end. There is loud chatter and hubbub in the background, the B-Team loud and running around. Trying to track him, Jeremy knows. Now that they know he took a flight, the first place they’ll look outside of America will be Britain, Jeremy knows. Staying so exposed in a place like London is going to get him found faster than he wants. 

“I’m okay,” Jeremy says vaguely, at one point. He’s still bleeding, and he’s so zoned out that he can’t recall if anybody has been talking to him for the last few minutes. 

The voice that responds to him is Trevor. “I told you this would happen.” It’s low, obviously so the others can’t hear him. Jeremy must have been handed off to him, likely because the others think Trevor is the most likely to get some information out of him. 

“Yeah,” Jeremy murmurs. Then, “Wait, did you?”

Trevor makes an uncomfortable sound, raising his voice to shout, “He’s stil conscious, Geoff!” Then, he lowers it again. “I’m sure, at some point. They’re all worried, you know. Losing their minds over you. They love you. Asshole, I can’t believe you just ran off like it wasn’t a big thing that would get everybody worried. And now you might be dying. Ridiculous.”

Jeremy says, “Hey, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. I know blood loss. We all do. How long have we been using comms?”

_ Since before either of us ran with them, _ Jeremy holds himself back from saying. Instead, he says, “Trev. Trev. Hey, Trev.”

“Yes,” Trevor says, low and strained. 

“You’re not gonna tell them, right?”

Trevor is silent for a while. “Stay conscious and we’ll see how it goes.”

“There are some things I need to do, man.”

“Things to do with-“ Trevor cuts himself off. “With him?”

“With stuff.” Jeremy puts his free hand up to his bleeding nose and sniffs, feels the broken bones there throb. “With stuff. And I’ve gotta do them on my own. Because- because he trusted me to, right?”

“And he didn’t trust anybody else?”

Jeremy is developing a rapid and terrible headache. He doesn’t remember why he’s bleeding, abruptly, and for a moment there is a vast, consuming terror sweeping over him, before he’s back in his own body and back out the ground. 

“Sort of,” Jeremy says. “I guess. I guess, yeah. I-“

His phone makes a sad little beeping noise. Jeremy checks and it tells him that it’s at only 10%, the battery metre running low. 

“I don’t know,” Jeremy says. “I’m like him. I guess. British.”

“You’re British?”

“Not British,” Jeremy corrects. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Trev.”

“Jeremy.”

“I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Jeremy,” Trevor repeats, low and steady. “Say the word and I tell them where you are. They’re gonna find out soon anyway.”

“Not soon enough,” Jeremy says. 

Then, he stands up. 

The pain is blinding, hot and sweeping, and it almost knocks him off his feet. Jeremy almost passes out. He takes a long moment to stand there with both hands against the wall to keep him upright, phone between his cheek and his shoulder.

Trevor says, “Yo, dude, what the fuck was that?”

“I’m good.” Jeremy grits his teeth. “I’m good, man. Up on my feet. I’m all better.”

In the background on Trevor’s end, somebody - Michael, maybe, or Geoff - is yelling. “He’s fine! He’s good!” Trevor yells back. Then, “You’re up?”

“I’m up.”

“Damnitt, Jeremy.”

The first five steps feel easy. With the nausea, the lack of blood in his brain, Jeremy almost feels like he’s floating down the alleyway. Then, he falls over his own feet and lands on his ass, and his phone is on the ground, cracked, the screen flickering. 

Trevor is still on the line. Jeremy picks up the phone with all the effort he’s got left in him and puts it to his ear, getting little bits of glass stuck in his cheek. 

“He’s down,” Trevor is telling the others, “He’s down, I think that was gunshots-“

“I’m good,” Jeremy slurs. “Just tripped.”

Then, the phone splutters out, light flickering from the screen, and the line goes dead. 

“Fuck,” Jeremy says to the phone absently. He drops it and it cracks into three pieces.

He doesn’t know whether he zones out, then, or just simply forgets where he is. The cold concrete beneath him is comfortable and Jeremy is content to rest here forever. He closes his eyes and sleeps, but it’s not really sleep, because he’s in far too much pain for that. 

When Jeremy comes to, there’s a man over him, looking down at him. 

There’s nothing distinctive about him. He’s wearing a dark jacket and slacks, and he’s got dark hair and a beard. He looks young, though not too young. Late twenties, maybe older. He’s heavy-set and curious.

“Hi,” Jeremy wheezes. “Don’t mind me, man.”

“You alright, mate?”

“I’m good,” Jeremy tells him. He tries to roll over from his side to his back and ends up stuck somewhere between, head throbbing.

The man scans him with an eye analytical enough that Jeremy knows that now, here, he is being examined by somebody not to be messed with. Someone in the business, of course. That was never in doubt. Civvies aren’t often in the business of stopping to examine half-dead bodies down shady alleyways. 

“What’s your name?” The man asks Jeremy.

“Forgot it.” Jeremy spits out a mouthful of blood. “Think I’ve got a head injury, bud.”

“I can see that.” The man sticks out a hand. “Daniel Grunchy. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh shit.” Jeremy can’t stop the words before they come out.

Grunchy raises an eyebrow at him, still appearing well-meaning, though now Jeremy knows that that look could be hiding something far less friendly. “Amnesia cured?”

“Just about,” Jeremy slurs. Somebody comes up behind him, from the other side of the alleyway, and there is a sound like a kick to the head. 

Jeremy registers that he’s the one that’s been kicked in the head. Then, he passes out on the ground, and everything goes away. 

***

Daniel Grunchy is not the most intimidating of men. He’s not as distinctive as his former partner, either, though Jeremy can’t help but wonder if that’s the cultural differences talking. 

Here, Daniel’s pleasant, rough demeanour, kind of like a next-door neighbour you don’t know very well, seems to fit in. It doesn’t exactly make him seem befitting of the hype around him. He doesn’t present like a criminal, that’s for sure. If Jeremy was to see him walking down the street at any hour of the day, he wouldn’t bother crossing. He doesn’t even get the vibes that somebody like Grunchy could make it as a pig. He just seems like just another guy. 

He’s not, of course. Maybe that’s this guy’s weapon. 

They don’t intimidate Jeremy. There’s no need for them to. They know who he is, Jeremy has no doubt. Maybe they knew him from the start, from the moment Daniel found him in that alleyway. There’s no way they wouldn’t, being criminals of relative renown.

With Daniel knowing Gavin, too, Jeremy can’t help but wonder whether he’s kept up with the guy for all these years. Even if the pair aren’t in contact anymore, it would be hard for a man like Daniel to be unaware of what Gavin has been doing for all this time. 

They put Jeremy up in a hospital bed in a dark room with no windows. Jeremy assumes it’s underground, and as the pain meds kick in he spends a while imagining being locked away in some underground pit somewhere, one of London’s old jailhouses. It’s a fun thing to think about and far less fun in real life when they handcuff his wrists to the side of the bed, an IV coming out of his arm. 

It’s boring, mostly. Jeremy knows they won’t kill him. He’s too valuable to them to lose, and they wouldn’t want to get caught up in a conflict with the Fakes of all people. No group is stupid enough to try that, not if they want to last more than a few months in this business. They treat him with cold, down-to-earth civility, and Jeremy sleeps for what feels like ten hours when they finally let him after sorting out his head. 

Not concussed, they told him. Jeremy thinks that must be a lie, for how woozy he feels, but he passes out on the sheets before he can think about it much more.

Jeremy’s dreams are odd and sprawling, too loud for his brain. He’s stumbling around in the dark looking for Gavin in the penthouse back home, and Gavin is hiding under a table somewhere but it’s too dark to see. Then, he’s crushed against the ground between a bike between his legs and the concrete, pulverised from a turn too low. Then, he’s floating in the lights of a dance floor. Jeremy doesn’t know this place. Somewhere, music is blaring.

Jeremy dreams he’s lying beside Gavin somewhere, and they’re both drugged up, both out of their minds. Gavin is playing with his fingers and neither of them is tender in the way they should be, neither of them is soft in the way that the others can get, because they’ve seen too much, done too much. They’re British right down to the core, even though Gavin is Italian and Jeremy is Bostonian. They’ve been in this business for longer than they’ve been people, it feels. They can’t stay there for long, but they linger. 

When Jeremy finally drags himself from sleep, he doesn’t know where he is or what time it is or what happened. He’s in pain all over, the meds obviously having worn off, and Daniel Grunchy is sitting beside his bed, looking at him. 

“Uh,” Jeremy says. “Uh. Hi?”

“You’re Jeremy Dooley,” Daniel Grunchy says. “Hi, man. How are you doing?”

Jeremy tries to stretch, to seem a little less tense. It hurts tremendously. “I’m good, man, I’m good. Been better.”

“I can tell. Hitting that guy with your bike wasn’t very smart,” Daniel tells him, amicably. There’s no malice under the words. He seems almost conversational.

Jeremy swears under his breath. He still has no filter after all of this. Then, he says, “Yeah, uh- well. You know. Gotta do what you gotta do. I- uh- well. Thanks for fixing me up, anyway.”

“No problem.” Dan scrutinises him. “Why are you in London?”

“Crew business.”

“On your own?”

“That’s not really anything for you to be concerned with, bud,” Jeremy says casually. He flexes all of his fingers under the bedsheets and calculates his odds of getting past Daniel and out of the door. He could take the guy. Daniel is big, but not built like a fighter, and he’s taller than Jeremy but what Jeremy lacks in height he makes up for in muscle. He’s tired, too, though, and dizzy from blood-loss. Plus, it’s not like he can risk another hit to the nose without having to have the whole thing taken off, which he would never live down among the rest of them.

“Is it not?” Daniel asks. “Because we found you right outside of my turf. That’s a big deal to us, mate.”

“Well. What I was doing there isn’t really anything important-“

“Really? Then what are you up for? Who are you looking for?”

Daniel is still playing the role of the friendly guy, the open guy. Jeremy doesn’t buy it for a fucking moment. Behind those eyes is calculation.

“I’m here for personal reasons,” Jeremy tries.

“Like?”

“Sightseeing.” Jeremy runs his tongue along the outside of his gums, tastes blood. “You know. Wanted to see the big, uh, fuckin’- Ferris wheel, and shit.”

Daniel stares at him. Then, he says, sounding close to what Jeremy might even call hurt, “If you want to know where Gavin is, you could just ask, you know.”

Jeremy stares and stares. He barely recovers enough to say, blankly, “What?”

“I don’t know who you think I am to Gav,” Daniel says, “But he’s a friend to me. You could just ask if you’re looking for him. What, did he up and disappear? He used to do that from time to time when he ran with me.”

Jeremy can’t keep up with all of this. He says, “Wait. Wait. Lemme-“

Daniel waits patiently, looking as bewildered as Jeremy feels by the whole affair. They sit in silence for what must be a few minutes, Jeremy barely awake, just about keeping his head from falling back against his pillows as sleep calls him. The room is dark and still windowless, and he doesn’t know what time it is or where they are, or where his phone is. He thinks he remembers breaking it, but he can’t be sure. 

“Okay,” Jeremy says, after a second. “Okay. Let me get all of this straight-“

“Go ahead,” Daniel tells him.

“You-“ Jeremy closes his eyes. “You and Gav, you’re still friends? You’re not the reason he left?”

“Did he say I was?” Daniel asks, concerned.

“He didn’t say much of anything about you,” Jeremy tells him. “No offence. He’s quiet about his past.”

“But you’re here because of him.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says. “Yep.”

Daniel stares at him, then makes a motion with his hands as if ushering Jeremy to keep going. “And?”

“And-“ Jeremy swallows. “And I’m trying to find him, okay? Jesus Christ, I can’t do this mind-games shit, that’s not my job. He disappeared, and now he’s gone, and I don’t know where he is but he’s- he’s my boy and he wanted me to come get him, and I said I would, and now I’m tracking him god knows where through fucking England, goddamnitt. That’s why I’m here. I’m looking for him, and I need to bring him home.”

There’s nobody else in the small, cramped room, but Jeremy thinks that if there was, they would have gone as silent as Daniel, too. It falls thick and heavy and Jeremy thinks if he listened hard enough he could hear a pin drop in the stillness. He closes his eyes and lets his head fall to his knees, still covered by bedsheets.

After a long period of silence, Daniel says, “Well, okay, that’s something. That helps me, anyway, since that might help explain why Gavin was here four days ago, babbling about some files he needed to get his hands on.”

Jeremy’s head snaps up. “He was here? Gavin was here?”

Daniel levels him a firm look. He still looks like your average Joe, not loud and short and muscled and distinctive as Jeremy, with his bright hair and his big voice. Something in that stare is so distinctly-

Jeremy can only find one word for it, and that’s British. The word doesn’t mean quite what he thinks it does, though. Not anymore. 

That stare says,  _ I’ve seen things you could only imagine.  _ Jeremy levels it with his own, tries to say with the curve of his mouth and the snarl in his eyes,  _ me, too, motherfucker.  _

Daniel says, then, “Yep. Gavin’s been here. And the one thing he didn’t mention was anybody else coming along with him, so I think we’ve got to start figuring out just what’s going on here.”

***

The next hour is a blur. Daniel uncuffs Jeremy’s hands from the bed and Jeremy refuses the help that he offers him to stand. He assures Dan that he’s fine. Dan doesn’t protest that. The pair of them make it upstairs and to a room that actually has windows, cold as it might be, and they sit by the window overlooking the city and get to work. 

Most of Jeremy’s shit is destroyed, is the first thing he finds out. His laptop is in bits, salvaged from his bag. His phone, too, is shattered, broken beyond repair, and Jeremy fiddles with the pieces of it as he picks through the remains of his belongings. He salvages a shirt and a pair of pants, and his knife, which is hardy and strong through it all, even with a crack through the middle. Apart from that, everything is torn, shattered or scorched.

After Daniel lays everything they found of Jeremy’s out in front of him and lets Jeremy take what he wants, he brings out a laptop of his own. It’s surprisingly personable. There’s a bright rainbow pattern on the back that looks oddly familiar, somehow. “Alright. Tell me everything.”

“Everything?” Jeremy repeats, shiftily. He scans the room for cameras and bugs for the fourth time. “Big question, man.”

Daniel snorts. “I can help you if you tell me what you’re looking for.”

“Fine.” Jeremy takes a deep breath. “Gavin’s been missing for a week, ish. About that much, anyway. He goes missing a lot. Every few months. Nobody gets too concerned.”

“Alright.” Daniel pins Jeremy with a look. “And you’re Rimmy Tim, right? With the Fakes? BrownMan’s replacement.”

That stings a little. “That’s me,” Jeremy says, dully.

“Got it. Keep going.” Daniel is typing something. Maybe notes. Maybe he’s contacting Geoff right now to tell him that Jeremy is here, like Jeremy is a runaway kid to be escorted back to his parents.

Jeremy shakes his head loose of such thoughts. “Anyway. He went missing. He always does, so nobody worried. Then, he called me.”

“He called you.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait,” Daniel says. “You’re dating him, right?”

“Something like that.” Dread sweeps over Jeremy, then. “You two- you’re not-“

Daniel laughs. “Nah, mate. Never. I’ve got better taste than that.” 

Jeremy snorts, though the motion hurts his whole chest, where he knows he’s bruised and ripped to pieces. “That’s a relief.”

“You’re with Gavin, then?”

“Something like that. It’s complicated.”

“Complicated,” Daniel says, laughing a little, “Got it, got it, noted.”

Jeremy chooses not to get uppity about that. “Anyway. He, uh, called me. Told me he needed me to come find me, and only me, because- well. You know. He and I have a lot in common. I guess.”

“And you left?”

“And I left.”

“You didn’t tell anybody before you did?”

“Nope,” Jeremy confirms.

Daniel mutters under his breath, “You two  _ are _ bloody similar.”

Jeremy chooses to ignore that. “I’ve been here for a day or so. This is the only clue he gave me. I’ve been tracking down people he used to run with, and since I got here, they’ve been tracking me, too. One of them nearly ran me off the road earlier.”

Daniel nods. “That was-“

“Legacy. I know,” Jeremy says. “They’ve been mixed up with him for a long time. Or I guess, since a long time ago.”

“You know about all of that?”

Jeremy goes with honesty. He’s too tired to do anything else. “Some of it. I know about the woman he saved. And they threatened you because he got her help? I know about all of that.”

Daniel winces. “Oh. You don’t know the half of it.”

“I’d figured,” Jeremy admits. 

Heavy silence hangs between them. Then, Daniel tells him, “Well, he was here a few days ago. He stops by every now and then. Gav and I are still friends, still on the same side. I know if I needed him, he’d be there. He knows if he needed me, I’d do the same. He’s- you know.”

“I know,” Jeremy says, and he does. 

“He needed some data for some guy. Some files or something. He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it, so I didn’t ask, but I can have somebody track down what he wanted if you need it.”

Jeremy almost says  _ no, it’s alright, that’s probably private stuff.  _ Then, he reconsiders and says, “Yeah. Yeah, sure, that would help a lot.”

Daniel nods. He types for a few seconds and hits enter. “I’ll get somebody on that. Mate, you need to get some rest. You really do. You look half-dead.”

Jeremy closes his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“We had to scrape you off the concrete like gum.”

“And I’m back on my feet in no time.”

“Do you want me to call the Kingpin?”

Something about that sentence sends a chill down Jeremy’s spine. “Hey. Can I borrow a burner?”

Daniel laughs. “Sure.” He seems to know precisely what Jeremy is thinking, and he hands him a burner, presses it into his hand like Jeremy might accidentally drop it.

Jeremy is halfway through stamping in Geoff’s number when he stops. He thinks about Michael and the others, searching for him, how they’re bound to head over to London soon enough. Jeremy doesn’t have long until he’s running from them, too. He thinks about Gavin, running from something he never told any of them about, and he thinks about his reason for being here, his odd, terrible, sort-of-wonderful similarities with Gavin, how they come from the same place.

He imagines calling Geoff, telling him his location. The security and the hope of the rest of them coming to get him, of figuring it all out as a team. Then, he thinks that Gavin would never treat him the same, never see him the same, and that maybe there are demons Jeremy will never be able to show to all the others, too, because they would never understand. 

Jeremy hands the burner back. “On second thought, I think I’m good.”

Dan raises an eyebrow at him. “Alright. You sure?”

“Yeah.” Then, more resolutely. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

“Alright.” Daniel looks dubious. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Got it.” Jeremy shakes his head. “Got it. If I’m not awake in four hours, wake me, yeah?”

Daniel sighs. “You really are just like him.”

“But you’ll do it.”

“Yes,” Daniel says. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

Jeremy knows then and there, as he stands up and lets himself be led back to bed for a short rest before throwing himself back to work, that he is going to do this on his own. He doesn’t have a choice. Maybe he never did. 

This is his job to do, and Gavin is depending on it. Jeremy couldn’t do it any other way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments help me so much 🌻 stay safe, friends! im here for you all!


	5. not where we had wanted to be

“He turned up in the middle of the night,” Dan starts, “Looking like he’d seen a ghost or something. Got me in a room and told me he was looking for some files on a guy that he had to push forward, to some agency, probably.”

“Does he come around often?” What Jeremy really means by that is to ask whether Gavin still runs with him, whether Gavin is more a part of Dan’s crew than the Fakes at this point. He trusts that the question comes through without his having to vocalise it.

Dan thinks, and then says, “Not often, no. Once a year, maybe, and never for long. Only when he needs something, or when I need a hand. Which doesn’t ever happen, by the way. One time.”

Jeremy doesn’t ask for details, no matter how much he wants to. “How long did he stay?”

“Long enough to get the files onto some USB. Then, he left. Didn’t want to stay the night, anyway.”

“Was he hurt?”

“Not that I could see.”

“Well,” Jeremy mutters, “That doesn’t say much.”

“I know,” Dan agrees. Then, “He doesn’t talk about the Fakes much. Only sometimes. He’s tight-lipped about it. I guess for your safety, all of you.”

“Not sure how much good that does.”

“The Fakes have enemies here, too,” Dan says. 

Jeremy decides not to address that. Instead, he clarifies, “And he didn’t say where he was going.”

“No.”

“Do you know any other gangs he might be in contact with? Any agencies? Anything at all? Who did he want the file on?”

Daniel pulls out his phone with a sigh. He looks faintly annoyed, which Jeremy almost prides himself on at this point. He can be annoying as fuck when he wants to be. “Let me check.”

“Thanks, pal.”

Daniel scrolls for a minute and then pulls up a .pdf, showing it to Jeremy. “This guy.”

Jeremy squints, taking the phone from Dan and scrolling through the file. It’s a report set out like a police report or a criminal record, but it’s definitely not registered. Marked up by a private agency, likely. It resembles one of the files Trevor might make on a rival to go in the crew’s records, but not closely enough that Jeremy is concerned that it might be one of theirs.

The subject of the document is a man called Marina Phillips. He’s got deep-set, dark eyes and a scarred face, tattoos climbing his neck. He’s British and was arrested and charged for the first time in 1998 in London for assault with intent to cause grievous bodily injury. He beat up a cop. There’s nothing distinctive about the guy, not at first glance. 

“Who is he?”

Daniel shrugs. “Hired muscle. Nobody notable.”

“But you know why Gavin wants to sell him out.”

“I guess-“ Daniel stops and considers it, then says, “I’d say, best bet? This guy made it out of a raid gone south last year on Mile End, got half of his crew arrested, I remember it. I’d say somebody’s got a price on his head because they reckon he sold them out.”

“But did he?” Jeremy asks. 

“Who knows?” Daniel says. “Nobody cares. Probably too stupid to do something like that, not smart enough to get out of there alive, but hey, that’s just how it goes.”

Ten years ago, Jeremy might have argued. But he’s known better for a long time now, known better than to assume that people won’t prioritise covering their bases over keeping people alive. He never has. He nods. 

“And do you know who Gavin might have got the file for?”

“Didn’t ask. We don’t get up in each other’s business much.”

“But he’s working with an agency. Or, at least, somebody who wants this guy. He’s working for somebody.”

“Probably,” Daniel agrees. 

“Fuck.” Jeremy massages his head around the stitches. Then, he says, “And you can’t give me any names he might have been getting this for?”

“I can give you a place to start,” Daniel suggests. “But that’s about all I can give.”

Jeremy grabs a notepad from across the desk, steals Daniel’s pen. “Go. Go, go, go. Give me everything you can.”

“Okay,” Daniel says. “First off, if you want to stay out of Legacy’s way, they’ll be out of commission for a few days. You properly ran over the crazy cunt who leads them, he’s been down since the crash, you should be alright for a bit longer before they get back on tracking you. I’d say your best shot is finding a man called Barker - he’s a broker, decent chap, I can get you and him in the same room if you give me a chance. He can tell you who’s looking for Phillips. You can take it from there, ask who you can, find whatever you need.”

“And, what? Just hope to stumble on him?”

“I don’t know if you’d noticed, but Gav is pretty good at disappearing,” Dan says flatly. 

Jeremy falls silent, nodding. 

“So that’s your best bet, yeah.” Daniel pauses and then says, “Gav is probably out of London by now. I know when he’s over here, he doesn’t spend a lot of time in the city. Not far out, but not in with all of us, as far as I know.”

“Okay,” Jeremy says, cautiously. “And that’s all you can give me?”

Daniel rubs his face. “It’s difficult, see. Because I want to help, and Gav is my best mate, but I can’t just sell out the gangs around here to some American bigshot. I wasn’t kidding when I said you lot have got enemies. My people, we can’t afford a conflict like that, not in down season.”

Jeremy nods, like he gets it, which he doesn’t. They don’t even have a down season back home, and he can’t wrap his head around Dan’s lack of regard for Gavin, how he doesn’t even seem to care whether the guy lives or dies. He can’t imagine feeling that way, least of all for Gavin of all people. Least of all for Michael. Least of all for any of the Fakes. 

The longing hits hard and deep and it hurts when it makes impact. Jeremy shoves it back down and shoves it away and does his his best to ignore it, because it hurts to think about doing any of this alone. 

“Alright,” Jeremy sighs, after a moment. “Okay, I get that. But you’ll tell me if he gets in contact. Or if you hear anything that you think I could do with knowing. Or just- if anything happens. You’ll call me.”

“On the phone that’s in pieces?” Daniel asks. He’s deflecting. Jeremy pins him with a stare and he backs down. “Yes. Yes, fine, I will. You can take a burner with you, too.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy says, and he means it. He’s never been known for his gratitude, for his politeness, but Daniel doesn’t mean any harm, and he can tell. He might not care about Gavin in the same way Jeremy does, but he cares.

“No problem,” Daniel tells him. Then, a little more awkwardly, “Do you want me to find Barker for you tonight? We’ve got a few hours until he’ll be out. Dress nice, don’t hide your accent, don’t hide your face. He’ll talk to you that way.”

Damn if that doesn’t set off all of Jeremy’s alarm bells. He agrees anyway. None of this is about his goddamn paranoia, about his worries. It’s about Gavin. “Sure. You said you’d find him for me?”

“I’ll do my best. He knows me. I’ll do my best to shoot him a call. No promises. And here.” Daniel fishes in his pocket for a burner, tossing it to Jeremy. “Don’t break it.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy tells him. “I mean it.”

“I know.” Daniel goes back to his own phone, typing up a message. The whoosh of the sending sound calms Jeremy’s racing heart just a little. “Don’t tell them back in America I never did anything for you.”

“I won’t,” Jeremy promises.

“Now get out of here. I’ll call you when we’re good to go.”

Jeremy stands up, then looks around a little uncomfortably. “Where should I go-“

“Somewhere.” Daniel waves a hand at him. “Go return that bike you stole or something, it’s still outside. Still in one piece, too, somehow.”

Jeremy feels immediately guilty about that. “Oh. Yeah. I should, uh, do that.”

He stumbles out of the flat in a haze, head aching, unused the brightness of day. It’s quiet outside, surprisingly so, the roar of cars oddly distant from the back entrance. He turns down a sidestreet and, in the shadows, manages to find the bike parked up next to where he passed out before. The blood has been cleaned away. Even when hiding away in some little apartment in the inner city, Daniel is obviously a thorough man.

Jeremy sits astride the bike and observes the damage. It’s still driveable, though the plating all along the front is crushed in on itself, accordioned like it was paper when it hit whatever it hit. It’s all a big blur. The only thing Jeremy remembers distinctly hitting is the man in the mask.

He catches sight of his arm, then. It’s been maybe a day and a half since he saw Fiona (time is odd and confusing), and even through all of this, her number is still faint and smudgy on his arm, along with Legacy’s address.

Jeremy pulls out the burner. He punches in Legacy’s address and texts it to himself to keep it, and then calls Fiona’s number.

She picks up in one ring. “Where the fuck is my bike, Jeremy?”

“Hello to you, too,” Jeremy winces. “And, who said I took your bike?”

“You palmed my keys. Don’t know why I trusted you.” Fiona makes a genuinely frustrated noise, then, and she sounds so truly and honestly upset that Jeremy feels bad. “Then the police turn up at my door about it, since apparently my bike was used to run somebody over, and I gotta run because my face is in their papers and one of them recognises me, and now I’m hiding out at the base and I can’t go home and shit, seriously, go fuck yourself, Rimmy.”

Jeremy settles back against the seat, feeling far worse about it all. “Fiona… I’m so, so sorry-“

“Ugh,” she says, “Asshole. Don’t get all weird about it. I hate you, but whatever. Just tell me what you want.”

“I, uh- I don’t really want anything.” It’s the truth, for once, because for all that Jeremy is a good liar, he doesn’t doubt that Fiona wouldn’t buy shit right now. “I called to check in. See if you wanted your bike back.”

“After you wrecked it on the run from Legacy?”

“You know about that.”

“Of course I do. I know about that.” She rolls her eyes. “Most people know about that. You ran Miller over. He’s all beat up, apparently. I still hate you, but that’s something, at least.”

Jeremy bites his lip. “Apparently I’ve got a few days until he starts hunting me again.”

“They’re properly after you, then,” Fiona says. “That’s got something to do with why you’re here.”

Jeremy winces. “Uh. Something like that.”

“Knew you weren’t actually interested in us. God. You need to get out of Britain before I hunt you down myself.”

They both know she doesn’t mean it. Jeremy says, “Listen- I’ve got some stuff to do, some people to find. I’m in one hell of a shitty situation right now, and I- I’ll do my best to give you your bike back, okay? And- and if I can help you and yours in the future, I will. And I’m sorry, again. For, uh, messing you around.”

“And being the reason I’m basically homeless.”

“And being the reason you’re basically homeless,” Jeremy parrots obediently. 

Fiona sighs down the phone. “Alright. Alright, fine, hang up before I change my mind and get somebody to track this.”

“Bye, Fiona,” Jeremy says, half-hopeful, half-resigned.

“Bye, Jeremy,” she tells him. Then, she hangs up.

Jeremy stares at the burner for a moment. Then, he adds her as a contact. The only contact already in the phone is Daniel, who is marked in as simply ‘Grunchy’, and Jeremy shoots him a text that this number is his. Daniel responds with a simply ‘got it’. 

Jeremy decides to catch a few more hours of shut-eye. Every part of him hurts. He considers calling the others again, and then decides against it, because if there’s one thing he knows for sure now, after everything that’s happened, it’s that he’s going to do this on his own. 

***

The sleep isn’t restful. Jeremy has odd dreams filled with Gavin and Michael, Gavin laughing and unhappy, Michael angry and pacing and coming to find Jeremy, searching London for him. Jeremy wakes in a cold sweat, exhausted despite the sleep and sure that the sooner he gets out of London, the better, and he has to take half an hour of lying flat on the floor of his room and staring at the ceiling to break out of the terror. 

This life guarantees that you end up with shit you can’t conquer, Jeremy supposes, as he clambers back into bed and goes back to sleep, back to odd, twisted nightmares and sweaty sheets. 

This time, he dreams about Kent. 

It’s odd to dream of the man. Jeremy doesn’t dream about him often, considering everything that’s happened between them, conspiring the whole dire situation. He doesn’t dream of him often, so when he does, it’s all the worse for it. 

Kent is angry. Not angry in the loud way he gets, pacing and ranting and throwing his hands around, but angry in that quiet, thoughtful way, sitting in the corner on his phone and thumbing through contacts, making soft-spoken calls that brim with fire beneath the civil words. Jeremy sits in the other corner and tosses a ball up and down in his hand. They used to have three of them and Jeremy would try to juggle them, but they’ve lost two over the months and now they’ve only got one. 

Dream-Kent is still angry even when he gets off the phone for the final time. “Jer. We’ve got shit on the way. Apparently the cops nabbed Baby, he’s on bail, but it won’t take them long to trace the goods back. Need the contact taken out. He’d fess up in a heartbeat.”

Jeremy is already standing, using the wall to keep himself upright. He can’t remember the last time he slept or ate, which should be concerning, but he’s long-since learned the careful art of not being concerned about things that won’t get fixed anytime soon. He’s been in this business for a long, long time, and he’s only sixteen now but most days he feels sixty.

“You want me to do it?” He asks Kent the question like he’ll get a pleasant answer.

Kent looks at him like he’s stupid. He gets mean when he’s stressed. “Yes. I want you to do it. That’s your job.”

“Sorry,” Jeremy mutters. Then, “I’ll be back soon.”

“Hey.” Kent gestures him closer. “Come over here, quick.”

Jeremy wanders across the room. The floor is cracking and the ceiling is thick with mould. This has been home for a year and a half, and Kent has been home for about that long, too. He settles down next to him. 

“Look at this.” Kent flashes a photograph of a wanted poster in Jeremy’s face. It’s a blurry shot of Kent’s face behind a pair of sunglasses. He’s only nineteen but the photo makes him look older than he is. “They got me, last time.”

“They can’t find you just from that.”

“Maybe.” Kent shrugs. “Maybe not. But they got me, anyway. So stay safe, okay?” 

The warning makes Jeremy feel all soft and weird on the inside, like something that didn’t spend long enough in the microwave, and it’s still cold all around the outside. He nods and lets Kent kiss him like he owns him, and it’s full of teeth, full of discomfort. He doesn’t mind it. Jeremy’s been through worse. 

Kent seems to forget that Jeremy’s been doing this for as long as he has, sometimes. Their dynamic is strange and uncomfortable but it’s familiar, at least. They grew up in the same business, left the same crew at the same time, and being stuck with the person that kept you safe when you needed it is strange when they’re suddenly not so set on protecting you anymore. When they’re the one sending you out into danger. 

Jeremy leaves their tiny, dingy flat. He kills a man, with Kent’s gun and Kent’s aim, because he told him too, because that’s how things go, and then he convinces himself to go back home again, because he’s sixteen and Kent, at that point, is home. He will realise later that his definition of home is fucked beyond recognition, but that’s a problem for older Jeremy to figure out, when he’s better at knowing how to keep himself safe and better at figuring out when he’s hurt. 

When the dream ends, Jeremy wakes believing that he’s still in it. It takes him a long time of staring at the ceiling to realise that he’s not in that tiny flat in upper Boston. That he’s here, in London, chasing something he feels like he can’t have again, forgetting what it’s like to not feel hurt again.

He shakes himself out of the dream, stumbles to the nearby bathroom to scrub his face. Jeremy avoids his reflection in the mirror and shakes it off, still aching.

He doesn’t have time to think about all of that, not anymore. Not now. None of it is as important as Gavin right now.

***

He lets Grunchy and one of his people dress him up nice and slick, in a suit that isn’t tailored but certainly does the job of looking like it is. It’s dark purple and he’s given shiny black shoes and a white cravat. It’s a subtle way of pulling off the Rimmy Tim look, sleek and quiet and lacking all the loudness, but it does the job.

“I’ve tipped Barker off,” Grunchy tells him, as they drive out into London. The sun is setting beyond the buildings and over the river, and Jeremy watches the sky turn orange. “He knows you’re coming. He’s definitely interested. Don’t mention that you know me if you want both of us to keep our eyes. Got it?”

“Got it,” Jeremy agrees. He straightens the cravat. “And you’re sure-“

“Yes, I’m sure that if anybody has information, it’s him,” Daniel repeats patiently. Then, he says to the driver, “This way, take a left here- thank you.”

The driver nods soundlessly. He looks as bored as Daniel. Jeremy feels like the only one paying the slightest attention to the severity of the situation. 

“You’re on your own from here on out,” Daniel continues, like Jeremy doesn’t already know that. “You can shoot me a text if you need information, and if you end up bleeding out somewhere then I can lend a hand, but I was being serious when I said I can’t end up caught up with some random Americans’ business. It’s risky enough to help Gav in the ways I do.”

“I know,” Jeremy says, and even though it pains him to say it, “Thank you. Seriously, I, uh- it means a lot that you’re willing to help me out on this. I know it’s for Gav, but-“

“I know what you mean.” Dan waves a hand at him. “Shut it, you mong. We’re coming up on the place now.”

Jeremy leans over to stare out of the shaded windows of the unmarked car. They’re coming up to a low, inconspicuous nightclub on the corner, a neon sig outside of the door. There are a few guys lingering at the entrance, and the car drives past the place and around the corner, then pulls over just out of sight.

Jeremy opens the door to get out. “See you, Dan.”

“See you. Oh, and, hey-“ Daniel grins at him. “Tell Ramsey I said hello.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes. “Got it.”

He gets out of the car and closes the door behind him. Daniel’s roughshod face disappears behind the shaded window and he’s gone. Jeremy starts back up the street as the car pulls away and carries on down the street, walking with as much confidence and swagger as he can muster, even though that is very little, given the circumstances.

They covered all the bruises on his face with makeup earlier. Jeremy prods at it, sure that it must be getting see-through by now, but when he catches a glimpse of his reflection in a store window, he looks good as new. It’s only a slathering of concealer and a pair of sunglasses between the outside world and his torn-up visage, but nobody wants to see that. 

As Jeremy approaches the club, one of the guy lingering at the entrance looks up. He’s the bouncer of the lot, though he looks friendly with the other two patrons. Jeremy nods to him and attempts to step past him. 

The man puts a solid hand in the middle of his chest. It feels almost like hitting a brick wall. “You’re new.”

“I’ve been here a few times,” Jeremy says, making sure not to hide his accent. “I’m in the country on business. Thought I’d stop by and talk to a few old friends.”

The man looks dubious. “I’ve never seen you before-“

One of the other men elbows the bouncer lightly. “Hey, no, that’s-“

“Rimmy Tim,” Jeremy fills in. “You might have heard of my crew. We’re a little hustle up in Los Santos, California.”

The bouncer’s face doesn’t change. He doesn’t look intimidated, but after a second, he nods and says, “Head on in.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy says curtly. He steps inside. 

The club is dark and pounding. It’s not late yet, but the night has already started, house music blaring from somewhere. It’s sweaty and gross and stinks of alcohol. Clubbing isn’t Jeremy’s scene back home - he’s more the type to bar-hop with the guys at two in the morning, more the type to disregard the loud music and the dancing, because he’s shit at dancing. There’s no choice in the matter this time. 

Jeremy heads down the stairs at the side of the room, on impulse. They head down to a darker lower level, where the music is a little less deafening, and there’s a bar against the back wall lit up by neon green tubing.

There’s only one man sitting at the bar. It’s as conspicuous as it can be. Jeremy takes a seat beside him. 

“Rum and coke,” he tells the man behind the bar. “Thanks, pal.”

The man gets to making his rum and coke without comment. Jeremy thinks he can make out the outline of a safety vest under his white dress shirt. It makes sense, for working at a location so unique as this one.

The man Jeremy is sitting beside says, “Good choice. They’ve got good rum here.”

“I’m not picky,” Jeremy says, flippantly. “What do you usually go for?”

The man gestures to his empty glass. It’s got the dregs of something dark and translucent in the bottom. “Coffee liquor.”

“Another for my friend,” Jeremy tells the barman. “Thank you.”

The barman nods, putting Jeremy’s rum and coke down in front of him, which he doesn’t touch yet. 

Barker says to him. “Unprecedented kindness. I didn’t know that was a custom where you’re from.”

“It’s not,” Jeremy confesses. “I figured I should provide some, being from so far away and all.”

“I see.” Barker takes his coffee liquor and sips it. When Jeremy steals a look at him, he catches a glimpse of a pale, sallow man. 

“We should skip the formalities,” Jeremy says, then. He’s not sure what possesses him to say it, but suddenly, it seems like the best course of action.

“Excuse me?” Barker asks, in the sort of tone that implies that he’s very much not surprised by anything that’s going on.

“I’m looking for information on a man called Marina Phillips,” Jeremy says, “And who might be trying to kill him.”

“And what can you give me for that information?”

Jeremy thinks on his feet. “It depends what you need. The Fakes can be generous when we want to be.”

“Funny,” Barker sneers at him. The light catches on the side of his face and Jeremy catches sight of a faint cut left there, like the imprint left by the corner of a mask pressing into the skin.

_ This isn’t Barker, _ Jeremy realises, faintly.

Then, something hits him hard over the back of the head, and Jeremy blacks out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments mean the world to me!


	6. lying to ourselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait lads! My country has gone into lockdown and I’m an essential worker, so my job needs me now more than ever. Comments and support mean far more to me now than it ever has, so if you could spare the time, it would really make my day. I love you all, stay safe!

“And you’re only telling us that he specifically told you, days ago, that he was going to go look for Gavin  _ now?” _

Trevor winces. “In my defence-“

“This is bullshit,” Michael explodes, firing off the couch like a bullet from a gun and pacing back and forth across the room. “Trevor, none of this works without trust. You can’t just keep shit like that from us. You  _ can’t.” _

“Let’s calm down,” Matt tries to say.

“Fuck calming down!”

“Getting upset now changes nothing,” Jack agrees. “And you should treat Trevor with more respect, Michael, he’s your boss now-“

“A glorified manager,” Michael mutters vindictively. He points a finger at Trevor accusingly. “And I helped promote you, buddy, I can depromote you the fuck down-“

“The word is ‘demote’,” Ryan interjects.

“Shut the fuck up, I never finished high school, who do you think I am?”

Ryan shuts his mouth, looking distinctly tired.

“And you,” Michael snaps at Trevor, “What else have you not told us, huh?”

“There’s nothing I haven’t told you, Michael.” Trevor sighs. “I caught him snooping in my files. I confronted him and he admitted that he’s on his way to find Gavin, wherever Gavin is. I didn’t ask. He’s-“ Trevor hesitates. “He wants to do this on his own. And I think our best plan of action, as the boss-“

“Boss my ass-“ Michael starts.

“As the boss,” Trevor plows onwards, as if he heard nothing, “Is to let him do what he has to do. And if he needs us, he’ll call. Jeremy isn’t a baby. This isn’t the type of business where we can afford to give up time and money to chase one guy who doesn’t want to be chased.”

“He has a point,” Geoff says.

“You, too?!” Michael shrieks. 

“I didn’t say it was a good one!” 

“I mean it,” Trevor cuts in. “If he needs us, he’ll say something. And if not, then, fine, it’s business as usual until he and Gavin sort out their weird thing and they come home. And we can talk trust and leaving and stuff for as long as you want to then, Michael, how does that sound?”

“You’re telling me,” Michael says, “That if Jeremy is dying out there, you’re gonna let him?”

“I’m not saying that-“

“But you are.”

“But I’m not,” Trevor stresses, “Jesus, Michael, calm down. If you want to find them so bad, then do it, but I say that the rest of us? We stay here. And we keep things running, because that’s what we do, right?”

There are a few scattered murmurs of assent from around the room. Matt looks the most worried, though it’s a close game. Everybody is dark-eyed and weary. It’s been a stressful few days. 

Michael scans the faces clustered through the meeting room for some sign of alliance. He comes up blank. Jack looks empathetic, meeting Michael’s eyes and shrugging, as if to say there’s nothing she can do. Geoff looks like he’s about to tear his hair out. Ryan is impassive, but his eyes keep shifting from Michael to Trevor and back again. He looks nervous. All of them are, really, and the B-Team don’t look any less wrecked. 

But Michael knows, looking around the room, that there isn’t a single person in this room who wouldn’t trust Trevor’s judgement on this situation. That if he’s really willing to run off to England, or wherever the fuck, then he’s on his own.

That realisation sucks. But it does make the decision final in his head, Michael thinks, even though he hates it. 

“Fine,” Michael snaps. “But we keep an eye on it, okay? All of us. And the second it looks like things might be getting bad, or he might want us there, we do something. Because I refuse to let him fucking die.”

“He can take care of himself, y’know,” Alfredo mutters, from where he’s sitting alongside Trevor on his phone. To an outside observer, he might have looked bored.

“I don’t give a fuck, actually, Fredo,” Michael snips.

Alfredo shoots him a look. “Touchy.”

“Yeah, actually, since one of the A-Team disappeared off the face of the fucking planet, and now nobody knows jack shit about where he went or what he’s doing, and the last we heard from him, he was probably bleeding out in some alleyway somewhere-“

“Alright,” Geoff cuts in, then. It’s not often that the leader voice jumps out, because he doesn’t use it much these days, but today is one of those times. “Alright, fine, fucking fine, let’s all just stop, yeah? Jeremy’s gonna find his way home someday soon, he can take care of his damn self, and until then, if we could go back to business as usual, that would seriously be appreciated. We have a goddamn crew to run here.”

“Thank you!” Trevor says, still mildly frustrated. “We’ve got jobs to do outside of dealing with whatever impulsive thing Jeremy Dooley has done this week, we can leave him be. And I think, unless there are any more questions, we should get back to our jobs, because we’ve got shit to do, folks, this work-“

The B-Team start to get up and file out. They’re all exhausted after all of this. Michael would feel guilty, but he doesn’t, not in the face of all of this. 

Eventually, it’s just the A-Team (or, rather, what’s left of them, three gents and only one lad) and Trevor left in the room. Trevor stands then, too, exchanging a few quiet words with Geoff by the window before shooting Michael a vaguely apologetic look and stepping out, too, likely to chase Alfredo or one of the others down for something. 

Michael flops down on the couch beside Ryan. With just the four of them here, it almost feels like old times. No Jeremy or Gavin to make things feel new and exciting. Michael feels like a kid when it’s just him and the gents. He’s never tell them, but it makes him feel awkward and out of his depth to be here without his lads.

Ryan pats his shoulder sympathetically. “I’m sorry things suck.”

“They do suck,” Michael bites out. “They suck ass. I hate it. Fuck this shit, seriously, Ryan, this is just- we’re used to Gavin being gone.  _ I’m  _ used to it. I’m fine with that shit. Jeremy’s different.”

“Jeremy’s a big boy,” Geoff tries to say, but there’s not much conviction in it. “He can take care of himself. He’s a big lad.”

“Sure,” Michael snorts, “I know he can, but not in this. Not if Gavin is gonna get him mixed up in all his- weird British mafia dealmaking bullcrap. I can’t believe Gavin is even doing this. Does he even know what he’s doing?”

“You don’t think Jeremy is just going to find him on his own? You think Gav, what, invited him?” Jack asks. 

“Jeremy wouldn’t have gone to find him if Gavin didn’t give him the okay,” Michael says. “He’s desperate to prove himself, but not that desperate to prove himself.”

“You’re right, I guess,” Jack ponders. “Though it’s weird. That, after all this time, Gavin might have- what. Asked somebody to come find him? Because that’s seriously not like him.”

“There’s no point in sitting around talking about it all,” Geoff sighs. “Won’t do any good.” 

When Michael shoots him an angry look, he’s taken aback by the morose look on his face. Geoff looks genuinely and entirely unhappy. 

Geoff catches him staring and shoots Michael a look. “What? I’m worried too, dickhead! Before Jeremy knew you, he knew me. I’m worried about him as much as you are.” Then, more quietly, almost petulantly, “He’s my favourite one, too.”

The scattered, subdued laughter doesn’t do much to melt the ice. 

“I’m sorry,” Michael says, though it’s decidedly one of the toughest things he’s had to say in a while. 

It’s easy to forget that Jeremy knew Geoff before he knew the rest of them. They were friends - not friends, more allies, connections, something like that which doesn’t require the application of such a heavy word as friends - for about a year before Jeremy rocked up to Los Santos with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and fear in his eyes and asked for a job. He hopped up to B-Team after a few weeks of living in the city and none of them are in the business of looking back on the past. 

It’s something none of them are good at, really. Pasts feel like they should be this great, powerful thing that shapes you, that makes you, but Michael knows along with the rest of them that a lot of the time, that doesn’t apply to the Fakes. Michael grew up a civvie until a drug deal gone wrong landed him in hot water with the feds and he ended up in Geoff’s radar in Los Santos, back in the days when none of them had anything and they were all far too hungry for power for their own good. Jack was a- a something, Michael thinks, did tax fraud or money laundering or something else that requires smarts, and ran with Geoff until they broke off to form their own little set. Ryan was a gardener, before it all. 

None of them ask Gavin. Michael knows it’s bad, though not in the way that people in movies do. There’s no screaming nightmares, no clutching the back of chairs. They all see it, though, in how Gavin gets a certain look in his eyes when they’re talking up a contact, in how he closes off when he thinks he’s gotten too close, in how he hates talking about feelings even when it’s just asking for pain on a scale of one to ten. They all know it’s bad. None of it needs saying. When somebody has grown up in the business, it’s obvious in everything they do. 

Jeremy is the same, though it’s less in his eyes and more in his hands, in his stance. He stands firm and grounded no matter where he is like somebody might try to take him to the ground, uses his hands as he talks in a measured way like a movement too wide might draw attention to him. Sometimes, when it’s just him and Michael and Gavin, he’s oddly unsure of himself, oddly quiet. He sometimes looks at Michael like Michael might hurt him. 

None of them talk about it. Talking about the past is something you don’t do. It’s something you don’t face, don’t touch. You keep yourself in the present and you don’t bother to give a moment of thought to the past or future out of fear that you might miss something, or say too much, or think too much. Such is the manner of the Fakes, Michael supposes. 

None of this feels normal for them, though. 

When Michael gets back to his room - it’s their room, really, the three of them, though he tells itself it’s his room because he needs something to put the distance there at times like his - he lies down on the bed where Jeremy was less than a week ago and pulls out his phone, and, on a whim, he googles Jeremy’s full name.

There are a few results. Most of them are for other Jeremys, other Dooleys. They’re not uncommon names. Michael finds an article on a criminal called Jeremy D, but when he opens it up, it’s a sleazy looking middle aged man with a thick sunburn who was arrested for fraud. 

“Fuck,” Michael murmurs to himself. He takes the dreaded leap into page two of Google.

It takes him ten minutes to find something about Jeremy, his Jeremy. 

It’s a column in a Boston paper about missing persons, just listing open missing persons cases of the recent months. The article is from 2014 and Jeremy’s name is there among the rest of them, obvious to Michael, who thinks he could spot his name anywhere if he tried. 

_ Jeremy Dooley. Missing since 12/12/14. _

Something about that is chilling. It makes Michael almost want to vomit. He doesn’t know why, really. That was only a few months before Jeremy joined the B-Team, and a few months again before he ended up on the A-Team. 

“Alright,” Michael says to himself. He starts to tear through missing persons’ cases from December of 2014, in Boston, and eventually, he finds himself a match. 

Jeremy was twenty-three when he officially went missing, but by the looks of it, the police weren’t exactly busting their asses to find him. He had a record, Michael notes, and a warrant out for his arrest at the time of his disappearance, and though his record is only for petty crimes, it’s still notable that his first offence, when Jeremy was the shy age of thirteen, was his most serious. Aggravated assault. He barely skirted around Juvie. 

When Jeremy went missing, nothing on his file was ever updated again. The person who filed the report, though, is an interesting part. It was a man called Kent Byrne, who was twenty-six at the time and filed the report anonymously but was tracked by the police on suspicion. He was pulled in for questioning on the disappearance and related crimes, but later released, and as far as Jeremy can see, he’s still alive and not in jail. Yet, anyway. 

He’s an asshole of a guy, by the looks of it. A hefty laundry list on his record, and when Michael pulls up a photograph of him, he is met with the unpleasant visage of a pasty man with tired eyes and a scowl, looking at the camera like he wants to break it. He looks like somebody took an attractive young man and melted it a little so it got all discoloured and sagging. 

Michael doesn’t like him. He’s not sure why. Instinct is not something he’s known for going by often. 

However, Kent Byrne, most importantly, pops up when Michael searches his names in Trevor’s files. 

When he requests access, Trevor grants him it in about five minutes, which Michael knows he could have done in half a second, but he figures he’s past complaining. He opens Kent’s file, and inside is only one thing. 

It doesn’t take long to deduce that nobody actually curated this file. It was pulled together automatically when somebody else called out a request online for information on Jeremy. It’s from 2018, and the archived webpage takes Michael to a website url made up of symbols and tags of which he recognises two, maybe. Deep shit. Difficult to find, if you don’t know what to look for. 

The message has immaculate grammar and no slang, no name. The username is a jumble of letters and numbers that means and says nothing. The person messaging is asking, simply, for information on the location and employment of street fighter Jeremy Dooley from Boston - not Rimmy Tim from Los Santos, which is good, because that means Kent may never have found him - with no notable responses. There is a tag added to the bottom of the archived page to a set of IP tracers, leading back to the home computer of Kent Byrne. 

In 2018, this asshole was still looking for him. Michael doesn’t want to be biased, but some big, ugly part of him is, and he barely knows why but for the fact that he‘s already scared enough for Jeremy without this guy after his head, too. 

There isn’t much else to be found on Jeremy from back in the day. By the looks of things, he grew up in contact with Boston’s underground, grew up rough and in the business. Stayed there until he was in his early twenties and then disappeared without a trace, leaving Byrne - his partner, friend, manager, anything, Michael thinks, but he knows it was bad - to try and fail, like some kind of goddamn amature, to find him. 

There’s a knock on the door. Geoff sticks his head in and says, “Trevor told me to tell you to stop snooping.”

“No he didn’t,” Michael snorts.

“No, he didn’t,” Geoff sighs. He kicks the doorframe, looking a tad dejected. “Michael, I mean it. You gotta stop. They’re gonna be fine. I can hear you thinking from out there.”

“I’m not even digging,” Michael defends. “I’m playing a game on my phone, Geoff, Jesus.”

“What game?”

Michael thinks fast. “Animal Crossing.”

“Then, what’s the mobile game called?”

“Fuck.” Michael stares at the ceiling. “New Leaf.”

“Fucking moron,” Geoff snorts. “It’s Pocket Camp, you buffoon. And stop looking up Jeremy’s shit. By tomorrow, we’re done moping. Got it?”

“Got it,” Michael sighs. “Sorry, Geoff.”

“It’s fine, asshole,” Geoff sighs. “Keep it up and I’ll come in there and- I don’t even need to say it.”

Michael can’t help his snort at that. “What, so, now that Gavin’s gone, I’m the only one you can finger?”

Geoff wiggles his fingers like a magician. “Gonna wear you like a finger puppet, buddy.”

“Oh, fuck,” Michael laughs. “Goddamnitt, Geoff, fine, I’ll get off the fucking phone, just don’t put your finger up my butt.”

“It’s a solid warning.” Geoff wiggles his fingers again for effect and then makes an obscene gesture. “Get the fuck to bed, asshole. We’re up bright and early for a team meeting that isn’t about Gavin and Jeremy for once, and I need you there.”

“Fine,” Michael sighs. “Get out of here, Geoff.”

Geoff grins at him. Then, he bows out. 

As Michael settles back against the sheets, the bed feeling bigger and more empty than it ever reasonably should, he makes a promise to himself to not let Jeremy get out of there again, not without him. Gavin is one he’s had a long time to get used to. Jeremy is a significantly more arduous problem. 

He’s gonna go insane unless things go back to normal soon, Michael thinks. He hates this so, so much. 

***

When Jeremy wakes up, the first thing he feels is pain. His head has been through a lot in the last few days, and he aches all over, right down to the bones. He opens his eyes and sees the white floor beneath him. It seems to stretch out for miles. It occurs to Jeremy that he may be concussed. 

There is somebody in the room. 

They’re pacing and talking, but their words are far too fast. Jeremy wants to tell them to stop but words aren’t working on his end, either, and he also figures that if he wants to stay alive, keeping quiet might be his best option for now. He watches the person’s booted feet pace back and forth in front of him, back and forth, back and forth. 

When the nausea comes, it comes all at once. 

Jeremy vomits all the way down the front of his shirt. It’s hot and bitter in his mouth and he feels it spill down over his front and into his lap. There is still a little bile left in his mouth after it’s all out, and Jeremy spits it in a gob across the ground, where it hits the left boot of the other person in the room. Left? Right? Jeremy can’t think whether it would be his left or their left. He can’t conceptualise which was is left at all, in fact. Nothing makes sense. 

Something hits him across the side of the face. That sobers him up. 

Bleeding from the nose and the ear, which Jeremy thinks must have torn with the impact of the hit, Jeremy sees stars for a moment, galaxies. There is a tight, familiar pressure at the front of his forehead that means blunt force trauma and a bad, bad headache later. 

The man standing in front of him is wearing a white mask with black eyes. He’s not the guy Jeremy hit with his bike, Jeremy thinks, but he can’t be sure. The man is yelling, and as Jeremy tunes it in, the volume of it surprises him. This guy isn’t afraid of being caught by anybody. Chances are, Jeremy is somewhere stupid out in the English countryside by now, like something out of a weird horror movie, and now nobody will find his body when they bury him out in the well. 

The man is saying, “And we can make it easy. We can make it very, very easy. We keep our word around here, see, mate, and if you give us an explanation, we can get you on a plane back to America before you know what’s happening. Might even get you a first-class seat.”

Jeremy spits another glob of vomit. It tastes like blood, now, too. “Fuck. That really hurt.”

“Back in the land of the living?” The man grabs Jeremy’s chin and tilts his head upwards, twisting it from side to side, examining his presumably extremely beat-up face. “Bloody hell, you’re gonna need medical attention soon. Could probably get away with no lasting damage if we got you to a hospital quickly.”

“Huh,” Jeremy says. He gags, then, like he’s going to throw up again, and the man takes four quick steps back. Jeremy giggles like a stupid, dumb moron. 

Something hits him again. It takes the edge off, leaving Jeremy jarred and numb, like everything in his face has been jolted slightly out of place. He feels brutalised and more scared than he has in a while, but not so scared that it’s really getting to him, so he ignores it. 

The man reminds him of some old memory. Jeremy shoves it down. There’s no time for memories, not now, not with everything that’s on the line. 

“Now,” the man says, “I’ve asked it before, and I’ll ask it again, and we can do this over and over until you pass out, and then we can do it again. What connection do you have to Gavin Free?”

“Oh,” Jeremy says, sniffing blood back up into his sinuses, where it sits in a heavy glob at the back of his throat, “I’m his bedmate. We make sweet, tender love on the reg. You should see it. Doubt you’ve made enough money in your life for our sex tape, though.”

The punch comes as no surprise. 

“I was telling the truth!” Jeremy spits, though a broken nose. “Ow, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Shut up,” the masked man tells him. “I won’t take funny shit, mate. Ain’t got no time for that. We don’t do the macho thing around here, it ain’t America.”

Jeremy runs his tongue over the front of his teeth, feeling the blood, feeling for anything broken. Your teeth always feel pushed back after a punch or an impact like that, but they’re not really broken.

“Maybe if you answer some of my questions, I’ll answer yours,” Jeremy slurs. “Weirdo. Fuckin’- weird.”

“Oh, yeah? What sort?”

“Why are you still after a kid that got on your bad side, like, a decade ago?”

The man steps back. Jeremy can’t see his face but he sees how his eyes widen and he knows, then and there, that he has either made a terrible or wonderful decision in admitting how much he knows, then and there, about Gavin’s history.

“If that’s all he told you,” the man snarls, then, “Then he obviously doesn’t trust you for shit. It’s far more complicated than that, mate. Trust me.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“The guy’s a dirty, rotten bastard,” the masked man tells Jeremy. It’s less like he’s telling him and more like he’s generally stating it. He steps forward and grabs the front of Jeremy’s shirt, wrenching him upwards to make eye contact. 

Jeremy’s head explodes with pain. He yells out and catches a vague impression of windows on either side of his vision, then of the sound of something breaking. The man holding him goes down and Jeremy sways his way back into his seat, arms still tied behind his back.

“Fuck,” the man on the floor hisses, scooting back behind Jeremy’s chair, and whips out a gun. He’s got a bullet in his arm, Jeremy notes absently. 

“Thought you guys didn’t have guns here,” Jeremy says. 

“Welcome to London,” the man tells him grimly, and then leans up over Jeremy’s chair to fire out of the window. 

Jeremy’s eardrums feel like they explode into a million tiny pieces. He ducks his head and yells into his knees, but some part of him is almost - almost - relieved, because he knows what this is, he’s been here before. There’s no doubt who is outside, who is here to drag Jeremy back home to Los Santos and teach him a goddamn lesson. 

When Jeremy, ears bleeding and filled with enough aches that he thinks they could last the rest of his life, looks up at the window, expecting to see Alfredo with a sniper or Michael with a minigun, or something, anything, something familiar, he makes brief, intense eye contact with a man in a bandana that he doesn’t know. 

“Oh, fuck,” Jeremy murmurs, beneath all the ringing in his ears. 

Whoever is here to get him out, it’s not the Fakes. 


	7. so tell me, what’s the news?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for keeping up with this fic as it goes! I’m trying to keep up with updates as much as I can, I appreciate your patience. <333

When they get him out of there, they shove Jeremy into the back of a white van and cuff him but don’t blindfold him. The shootout is over in a matter of minutes. Jeremy lets them manhandle him into the back of the van with only a little struggling.

There are no windows, so there’s no point in covering his eyes anyway, but they aren’t wearing masks, their faces open and revealed. They seem a comfortable lot, not nervous. That’s Jeremy’s first tip-off that he might have come upon people that maybe, possibly, don’t want to kill him, which is a nice feeling, since even Dan toed the line at times. 

One of them, dreads tied into a rubber band at the back of his head with a rifle rested against his hip, settles back against the wall opposite Jeremy as they drive away from the masked man’s base. The man in the mask is dead on the floor now, still left back there, didn’t make it long in that shootout before one of them landed a hit. Jeremy got grazed, too, but none of them have noticed, so he doesn’t say anything, either. 

The man with dreads asks Jeremy, “You hurt?”

“No,” Jeremy lies. “Sort of. I’m good.”

“Okay,” the man tells him cheerfully. He’s got some sort of British accent, but Jeremy can’t place where it’s from. If Gavin was here, he could probably geolocate the damn neighbourhood. “Your boy said we’re good to drop you off just outside of London once we’re done giving you the run-down on everything. He didn’t want you injured, so.”

“Oh,” Jeremy says. For a second, his muddled brain can’t decide whether his boy is Gavin or Michael. Then, he figures that it’s almost certainly Gavin. “How long is the run-down gonna take? Because I’ve got things to do.”

One of the other guys, leaning against the side of the van at the back, snorts, “You’re gonna wanna hear it, trust me. It’ll help clear things up proper.”

“Huh,” Jeremy says, then closes his eyes, headache growing. He figures he’ll just rest them for a little while, for a moment. 

When Jeremy opens his eyes again, they’re pulling to a stop. He blinks up at the interior of the van as the man with the dreads asks Jeremy if he enjoyed his nap, grabbing him under the arms and hauling him to his feet to shuffle him out of the van. The back doors open and Jeremy is pushed into a cold, grey world, concrete beneath his feet, a grey warehouse open in front of him. He stumbles over his own feet and somebody laughs. They shove him through the doors of the warehouse and out of the sunlight. 

Jeremy is pushed through the warehouse, which is stacked with goods, mostly crates with a few open-carry guards wandering around. They shove him into a back room, a converted control centre with a desk covered in buttons and dials, and tie his wrists to the arms of one of those spinny desk chairs. The guy with dreads and a woman, tall and thin with pale hair, stand up against the wall opposite Jeremy, casual, unassuming. 

The woman starts. “I’m Caroline. I’m not sure how confused you are right now, but you’ve got nothing to worry about here. I think Free would kill us all if w elect anything happen to him, seeing how pressed he was about all this shit.”

“Huh,” Jeremy says, again. It’s the only word his brain can form. Then, “You know Gavin?”

“Course we know Gavin,” the man says, grinning. “Got a history with that prick. Legacy, the guys who nabbed you before? Masked freaks? Used to run with them. Low standards, I know, but back in the day, that was how it was.”

“Legacy.” Jeremy furrows his brows. “They hated Gavin.”

“That was because he fucked with them.” The man laughs. “Rascal, honestly. Back when the dude still had a sense of humour. Now, every time I see him he’s all frowns.”

_ That doesn’t sound like Gavin.  _ Jeremy says, “He asked you to come get me?”

“Asked us, he says.” The woman snorts. “Paid us. We might be off Legacy’s dime by now, but we still work for hire. And he knows we can suss Legacy out by now. That’s one of their big guys down, by the way. The other prick, the one you ran off his bike, he’s still out there, I reckon. So long as you didn’t kill him, anyway.”

The man grins. “That was awesome, by the way. Somebody filmed it and put it online. He folded like fucking cardboard, it was incredible.”

“Uh,” Jeremy says, “Thanks?”

“Onto why we’re here,” the woman cuts in. “Gavin wanted us to give you a little explanation about that lot. Legacy, they’ve been after his blood for years. You probably figured that out. Since he ran with Grunchy, Free’s been fucking with that lot. When he ran off to America after…” She winces, “That whole mess, they still kept an eye on him. Try to track him down every time he comes back over the pond. Call it a rivalry, but it’s gotten bloody rancid over the years.”

“He saved a woman,” Jeremy recalls. “That’s what started it.”

The woman nods. “Pretty sure that’s how it began, yeah. When they heard you were around, a Fake in our neck of the woods, I think they wanted to nab you as a bargaining chip.”

“Lovely,” Jeremy grimaces. 

“Yep,” the man agrees. “They’re a lovely lot.”

“They shouldn’t be much of a threat to you now,” the woman tells him. “Not if you’re careful, anyway. The big gun is still kicking, but he’s kicking after getting mowed by a motorcycle, so it’ll be a while until you have to worry about him. Long enough for you to finish up whatever you came here to do, probably.”

“Probably,” Jeremy echoes, not meaning it. 

The woman squints at him, then, “It was odd to see you here. You got any business in London?”

“Sure,” Jeremy says. “Just here to lend a fellow Fake a hand, nothing more.”

“Huh.”

“Gav and I have each other’s backs,” Jeremy says. “All of us do.”

“Didn’t think that was how it was done over there.”

“Well,” Jeremy says, “The Fakes don’t do things conventionally.”

The man cuts in. “It’s nice to see somebody looking out for that guy, anyway. Swear he gets caught up in more crazy shit every time he’s here. We’re a long way from where we started back on Mile End.”

Jeremy stills. He does his best not to let his curiosity show on his face, but the man, like a vulture, picks up on it. 

He laughs, almost incredulously. “You don’t know? Oh my god, he doesn’t know-“

Caroline sighs, long-suffering. “Dale.”

“Caroline,” Dale replies, gleeful. 

Caroline folds her arms, stepping forward from the wall. “You can talk him through it if you want. I am not getting involved in this, if Free wants to wring somebody’s neck for sharing his secrets then it won’t be mine.”

“Got it, chief,” Dale grins at her. Caroline steps past Jeremy and out of the room, and Jeremy cranes his neck to watch her go before turning back to Dale.

Dale is grabbing another spinny chair. He plonks it down in front of Jeremy and sits on it backwards, resting his elbows on the top of the back of it with his long legs to either side. “Do the Fakes really not know about the whole thing?”

“No,” Jeremy says, figuring it’s his best course of action at this point. “What whole thing?”

“You know.” Dale waves his hands vaguely, then leans in to conspiratorially say, “Larson. All of that.”

Jeremy furrows his brow. “I know the name… shit. That’s, like- he paid Gavin to rob him, like, ten years ago, right? And then they put him away for, like, fraud, or something. Insurance extortion. Something like that.”

“That guy,” Dale nods. “But, nah, not quite. Larson Data Processing, that’s what I mean. Larson, the OG Larson, he’s still in the clink, but his company is being run by his son now. Gav does work for them. Like-“ Dale looks a little uncomfortable. “Like, bad work. You know.”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy says blankly. 

“I don’t know all of the details,” Dale says, sighing, “But Gavin’s been- look, it should be pretty obvious by now that Larson Data Processing isn’t just a data processing firm, right?”

“Not to me,” Jeremy says. “Now that you mention it, though. The name kinda gives it away.” 

Dale laughs, then sobers. “Yeah, uh, they don’t just process data for local business like some normal goddamn establishment. They’re brokers, notorious ones. Got caught up with the mob back in the day, hoard information on everybody they can get their hands on. Not nice people, I’m sure you can tell. Real mean folks, too, especially the guy leading them now. Most of their contacts are only on their payroll because they’ve got something to hide.”

“And they’ve been brokers since the beginning?” 

“As far as I know, yeah. Larson OG, he said in court he put together the robbery for insurance reasons, but most of us folk didn’t buy it. Free wasn’t even in the courtroom, they never brought him in. Larson didn’t need the money. And when Free scarpered so quickly after all of that- it doesn’t add up. Don’t ask me what the staged robbery was actually for, I seriously don’t know, I just know it was- y’know. Shady shit. And there were rumours going around for ages afterwards about-“

Dale cuts himself off. Jeremy presses, “About what?”

“Well. Somebody said- y’know, somebody said that there were security tapes floating around with, like, somebody firing at Free.” Dale glances around like Caroline might come back in at any moment. “Like maybe the robbery wasn’t planned after all. But that’s not my thing to comment on. Y’know, that’s- old news, anyway, but, long story short, Free is still working for Larson Junior, who is one nasty motherfucker as far as I can tell, and that’s what he comes over to do.”

For a second, it feels a little like Jeremy’s whole world is imploding around him. He thinks of Gavin selling information about the lot of them to some cruel British stranger, thinks of him running over to Britain to sell them out at every chance he can get. Jeremy knows the idea is stupid and after a few moments the fear fades back, but it lingers a little at the edge of his mind - the thought of Gavin handing over their numbers, their plans, their names. Everything he knows about the guy has been turned upside down about ten times in the past week. Jeremy doesn’t know how much more of it he can take, quite honestly. 

“So,” Jeremy says, “Let me get this straight. Gavin is here working for Larson, who is probably- fuck, I don’t know, extorting him or some shit. He heard I was here, heard I got nabbed, and what, paid the lot of you to get me? And he didn’t just get me himself?”

Dale nods. “Can’t tell you why he did it, I’m not in that guy’s head, but yeah, that’s about it. Weird guy, that Free. But you know that.”

Jeremy does know that. He closes his eyes and groans exhaustedly. “Fuck. I fucking hate the guy sometimes, you know?”

“I know,” Dale says. “We’ve been on good terms with him since we broke things off with Legacy, so, like, a good dozen years. He’s a decent guy, but god is he frustrating.”

Jeremy nods. “And I need to find him. Like, soon.”

Dale cocks his head to the side. “Why?”

“He wants me to.”

“Huh.” Dale sighs. “Well, he’s probably in some sort of mess, so good luck with all that shit. We’ve got no interest in the Fakes, either, so as long as you keep out of our hair, we can leave all this where it’s sitting.”

“Sounds good to me,” Jeremy agrees. “And, uh, thanks. For not knocking me out again. I don’t know if my head could have taken it.”

Dale laughs. “Don’t worry, man. Bloody hell, you do look like shit.”

“I do.” Jeremy rolls his eyes. “I might look a little less like shit if somebody untied my hands, y’know. That might help. Just a thought.” 

“Alright, alright, no need to get all uppity.” Dale comes over to untie Jeremy’s arms, and as soon as he’s free, Jeremy stands up and stretches. 

“So,” Jeremy asks, “I do actually have one more favour to ask.” 

Dale snorts. “Oh, lord, here we go.”

“Not a big one.” Jeremy sighs. “Listen, if I wanted to find somebody in London who knows Larson, knows how to find out more about them- where would I go?”

Dale stares at Jeremy. Then he laughs, a little incredulously. “You talk like they’ve got allies. Jesus, nobody likes the lot. Everybody who works for them only does it because they’re being extorted.”

“And I get that,” Jeremy agrees, “But- but I need to start  _ somewhere, _ right?”

“Sure.” Dale sighs like he’s exhausted by this whole thing. “Fine. Uh, top of my head, your best bets are probably- uh, fuck, you tried Barker yet?”

“That didn’t work out,” Jeremy grimaces. 

“Yeah, I figured. Doesn’t take much for the guy to give up his meetings for cash, plant marks to meet with him and let them get nabbed. That what happened to you?”

“Yep,” Jeremy grimaces.

“Then Legacy paid a pretty penny for you. Anyway, best not to try that again, aye?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy agrees. “Anybody else?”

“Grunchy could tell you a thing or two about Larson.”

“Tried him, too. I don’t think he’d appreciate me going back.” The idea of going back to him feels wrong somehow. Jeremy doesn’t know why he doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t.

“Huh. How about, uh, what’s his name- Jackson? Ellis Jackson? He’s an arms dealer, based over the river. Doesn’t take shit from anybody. He’s been a rival of Larson for years, hates the lot of them, since he thinks broker business is bullshit. If you can get information from anybody, it’ll be him.”

“Huh,” Jeremy says, “Okay, that’s good, I can use that. Ellis Jackson.”

“Lives in the studio apartment over a Tesco Express.” Dale sighs. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s humble stuff but he’s a powerful man, you better not tell him I told you where he lives or he’ll have my hide. He’s decent. He’ll lend you a hand if you explain the situation.”

“You’re sure?” Jeremy asks. “Because, uh, nobody’s really been decent this whole time, and I’m getting kinda sick of it, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Dale nods, like he’s trying to convince himself, too. “Yeah, it’ll go fine. Go get ‘em, tiger, y’know?”

“That’s the worst American accent I’ve ever heard,” Jeremy says flatly. 

“Well, I gave it a shot,” Dale retorts. “You gotta get out of here, man, you need to stop hanging around getting on top of me about my accent and hit the street. Time’s a-tickin’, right?”

“Yeah.” Jeremy shakes his head. “Yeah, you’re right. Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I should leave. Thanks, man, seriously, you’ve helped a lot.” 

“No problem! If I ever need to call one in with the Fakes-“

“I will immediately pretend not to know you,” Jeremy tells him flatly. 

“Then Free will lend me a hand-“

“I’ll tell him to pretend he doesn't know you, too,” Jeremy says. 

“Fuck,” Dale sighs. “Damn. Well, all the info I gave you, all for nothing. And here I was, thinking we were hitting it off, Dooley.”

“Unfortunately not.” Jeremy heads for the door.

“Oh, and, one more thing?” Dale says after him. 

Jeremy stops with his hand on the knob. “Yeah?”

“The guy left of Legacy, apart from their muscle,” Dale tells him, “His name is Harris. He’s the weaker of the two, but he’s a mean piece of shit, crafty. He’ll play dirty if it gets him what he wants. So be careful, yeah?”

Jeremy stops to digest that. Then, he nods. “Yeah. Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks, Dale. I’ll do my best.”

Dale grins. “Get outta here, Los Santos trash.”

Jeremy snorts. “Bye, Dale.”

He steps out. Caroline waves as he passes her and Jeremy waves back, skirting around an armed guard and the other man from the van earlier, who raises an eyebrow at him, standing up. 

“I’ve been told I’m dropping you off somewhere,” he says, leading Jeremy out into the daylight again, still dull and pale grey.

“Yeah,” Jeremy says, “Uh, the- the Tesco Express over the river?”

The guy looks unimpressed. “There are at least sixty of those, mate.”

“Uh.”

“Lemme guess.” The man pulls out the keys to the van, tossing them up and down in his hand. “The one that Jackson lives over? Dale showed me that, like, three months ago, he said if I tell anybody I’m dead, but that dude can’t keep a damn secret.”

“Yes!” Jeremy jumps on it. “Yeah, that one, the one with the arms dealer.”

The guy sighs. “Got it. Hop in the passenger side.”

Jeremy nods, going to hop in the passenger side. He forgets, briefly, that British people don’t know how the fucking roads work, and ends up having to clamber back out and around to the other side of the van, the guy laughing at him the whole way. 

The drive isn’t too unpleasant. They cross the big bridge Jeremy forgets the name of, the one in lots of movies, and Big Ben and that big goddamn Ferris wheel are far too close together, it feels like every tourist attraction is on top of one another. The guy chats away about football and rugby and other British stuff Jeremy doesn’t understand in his cockney accent. When they pull up outside of the Tesco Express, which is a small convenience store on a corner, the guy pulls the van to a stop and turns to Jeremy.

“Okay,” he says, “If you go ‘round the back, where the lorry deliveries are, there should be a door for residents. Ring up for the top floor flat and pray, I guess. Good luck, mate.”

Jeremy has the distinct and, by now, familiar feeling that he’s walking into something that is going to kill him. He’s had it enough times by now that he’s surely burned through all of his extra lives by now, but he tries to push past the dread and keep on going regardless. He thanks the guy and gets out of the van, which proceeds to screech off down the road, and Jeremy is alone again. No phone, no car, nothing. 

“Here goes nothing,” Jeremy murmurs to himself, and starts off across the street, around the back of the Tesco and into the little lot behind it. 

It’s a shady area, but nothing like home. Jeremy stumbles to the residents’ door and jabs his thumb into the call button for the third apartment, up on the top floor. It rings for a solid ten seconds. There’s a camera above the door, and Jeremy keeps his body angled towards it so the guy can tell that he’s not carrying.

Eventually, a voice answers. It’s with a thick accent that Jeremy doesn’t know very well. Welsh, maybe. “Alright, mate?”

“I’m good,” Jeremy says. On instinct, “I’m here about Larson.”

Nobody speaks for a second. “That was a bad way to kick this off. Wanna try that again?”

Jeremy considers it. “I’m good. Since I hate the guy as much as you.” 

There’s a pause again, and then Jackson says, “Damn. Bloody hell, that’s Rimmy Tim on my doorstep, isn’t it?”

Jeremy tilts his chin up towards the camera and grins, showing off his bruised face and broken nose. “The one and only. And I’m not here to fight, either, so we can chat if you let me come up there.”

“And I should trust you why?”

“I’m a trustworthy guy,” Jeremy says.

There’s another stretch of silence. Jeremy feels like he’s being watched from more than just the camera, and it takes all of his strength not to hunch up and start glaring around. He keeps his posture relaxed and light. 

There’s a buzz from the keypad, and then the door unlocks. Jeremy pushes it open and steps into the grubby front hall of the little apartment block. He decides to take the stairs up, jogging up them until he’s at the top floor and emerging onto the landing in front of a door into the top floor apartment, which Jeremy stares at for a second, catching his breath, before stepping up to and knocking. 

The guy that opens the door isn’t holding a gun up, which is not what Jeremy expected. He doesn’t look anything like Jeremy thought he might, either, broad and obviously of Asian descent, with friendly eyes and wide shoulders. He looks down at Jeremy through his scruffy beard. Jeremy looks up at him. They stare at each other for a second, and then Jackson says, “Well, Dooley, come on in.”

He sits him down at his kitchen table. Jeremy feels a little like a kid, sitting here and watching the man make English Breakfast tea. The flat is surprisingly normal, no guns out in the open. There’s a poster on the wall for a movie Jeremy doesn’t know. There are magnets on the fridge from Indonesia and Las Vegas. 

Jackson plonks a mug of tea in front of Jeremy with all the delicacy of a train crash. “Looks like you need it.”

Jeremy sips awkwardly. He doesn’t like tea. He doesn’t mention it. “You’re Ellis Jackson.”

“Who told you where I live?” Ellis starts with, without even stopping to pad things out. He takes a sip of his own tea while he waits for Jeremy to answer. 

Jeremy thinks on his feet. “It’s not in my interests to tell you where the Fakes get our information, but you’ve been in our books for a while. We’re interested in Larson Data Processing.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Ellis says, rolling his eyes. “I would be, too. They’re bastards. They tried to mess with all of you, yet? I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Not yet,” Jeremy says, “But they’ve had dirt on one of our guys for a while and he’s in over his head, so I’m here to sort all of this out for good. And if you tell me whatever you can about these guys, they’ll be done in days, I can make that promise.” Jeremy absolutely cannot make that promise. He plows onwards, “We don’t appreciate what they’re doing.”

“One of your guys-“ Ellis looks like he’s wracking his brain. “Free, right? Negotiator.”

“Him,” Jeremy confirms. “Thief, too.”

“Yeah.” Ellis snorts. “I remember the kid back in the day. From Mile End, grew up with the rest of that lot. Real prick. Liked to mess with cops. Got on the bad side of Legacy for a while, right?”

“You have no idea,” Jeremy mutters. 

“And I honestly don’t want to know.” Jackson fiddles with his coaster. “So, what, Larson’s got him working for them and you want to get him out of there?” 

“Pretty much,” Jeremy says, “But I wouldn’t mind taking the whole op down, honestly. They’re not good people. And it’s only a matter of time until they’ve got shit on us, though our golden boy has probably kept us out of it until now.”

“I see.” Jackson ponders that. “Do you know what he’s got on Free?”

“No.” Jeremy shifts uncomfortably, then decides to be honest. “That’s, uh, sort of a part of the reason why I’m here, actually. I want to know more about these guys, how to take them out, but- if you’ve got any of their records, anything on what they might be holding over the golden boy, that would help. God knows I won’t get it out of him, at least, until this is over.” 

Jackson seems to want to suss Jeremy out, searching his face for a lie. Jeremy meets his eyes with as much earnestness on his face as he can. After a moment, Jackson sighs and stands up, saying, “Alright, fine. I’ll see if I can find anything. Stay.”

“I’m not a dog,” Jeremy mutters, as Jackson pads out of the room. He stays anyway.

A few minutes later, Jackson comes back in with a laptop and a hard drive. He puts both down on the kitchen table and powers them up, plugging the drive in. Jeremy looks away as he keys in his password, even though he can’t see it over the top of the laptop screen, and then waits around for what feels like hours but must only be about ten minutes as Jackson searches through his records. 

“I managed to break into their files back in, what, seventeen? Early eighteen? Was a massive breakthrough, I tell you, and they wanted my blood. I had to move houses four times in three months.”

“Wow,” Jeremy says. “That’s insane.”

“Yep,” Jackson tells him. “I got a copy of everything they had stored locally. Not international server stuff, damnitt, but about everything they’d processed or accessed in the previous year or so, which was massive. I’m checking out what they’ve got now, just give me a minute-“

He keeps on looking. Jeremy taps his foot on the ground, staring around. There really is nothing to take in here. It’s blank, like the apartment of a man who might have to move out quickly. No personal affects. 

“This is something,” Jackson murmurs. “Huh. This is- this is new…”

Jeremy nods, opening his mouth to talk, when Jackson cuts him off suddenly. 

“Oh, shit.” Jackson clicks, then clicks again, then types in a bypass code with fingers flying across the keys. “Damn, okay, this is something. I can’t believe I haven’t seen this shit before.”

Jeremy leans in, almost trying to peer over the top of the computer screen. “What? What is it?” 

Jackson looks up at Jeremy then, a little apprehensively. “You and Free are… friends, right?”

Jeremy gets a cold, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Yes. We’re close.”

“Alright,” Jackson says, sighing, “Well, just- just make sure you’re ready for this.”

“Show me,” Jeremy demands. 

Jackson stares at him like he’s assessing whether Jeremy can handle whatever he’s found. Then, he sighs, as if to say  _ if you’re sure,  _ and turns the screen around. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make the world go round! <3


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